The Astronomer (Vermeer)

The Astronomer is a painting finished in about 1668 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is oil on canvas, 51 cm x 45 cm (20 x 18 in), and is on display at the Louvre, in Paris, France.[1]

Portrayals of scientists were a favourite topic in 17th-century Dutch painting[1] and Vermeer's oeuvre includes both this astronomer and the slightly later The Geographer. Both are believed to portray the same man,[2][3][4] possibly Antonie van Leeuwenhoek.[5] A 2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two works came from the same bolt of material, confirming their close relationship.[6]

The astronomer's profession is shown by the celestial globe (version by Jodocus Hondius) and the book on the table, the 1621 edition of Adriaan Metius's Institutiones Astronomicae Geographicae).[2][3][4][7] Symbolically, the volume is open to Book III, a section advising the astronomer to seek "inspiration from God" and the painting on the wall shows the Finding of Moses—Moses may represent knowledge and science ("learned in all the wisdom of the Egyptians").[8]

The provenance of The Astronomer can be traced back to 27 April 1713, when it was sold at the Rotterdam sale of an unknown collector (possibly Adriaen Paets (nl) or his father, of Rotterdam) together with The Geographer. The presumed buyer was Hendrik Sorgh, whose estate sale held in Amsterdam on 28 March 1720 included both The Astronomer and The Geographer, which were described as ‘Een Astrologist: door Vermeer van Delft, extra puyk’ (An Astrologist by Vermeer of Delft, topnotch) and ‘Een weerga, van ditto, niet minder’ (Similar by ditto, no less).

1.
Johannes Vermeer
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Johannes, Jan or Johan Vermeer was a Dutch painter who specialized in domestic interior scenes of middle-class life. Vermeer was a successful provincial genre painter in his lifetime. He evidently was not wealthy, leaving his wife and children in debt at his death, Vermeer worked slowly and with great care, and frequently used very expensive pigments. He is particularly renowned for his treatment and use of light in his work. Vermeer painted mostly domestic interior scenes and he was recognized during his lifetime in Delft and The Hague, but his modest celebrity gave way to obscurity after his death. He was barely mentioned in Arnold Houbrakens major source book on 17th-century Dutch painting, since that time, Vermeers reputation has grown, and he is now acknowledged as one of the greatest painters of the Dutch Golden Age. Relatively little was known about Vermeers life until recently and he seems to have been devoted exclusively to his art, living out his life in the city of Delft. Until the 19th century, the sources of information were some registers, a few official documents. John Michael Montias added details on the family from the city archives of Delft in his Artists and Artisans in Delft, Johannes Vermeer was baptized in the Reformed Church on 31 October 1632. His father Reijnier Janszoon was a worker of silk or caffa. As an apprentice in Amsterdam, Reijnier lived on fashionable Sint Antoniesbreestraat, in 1615, he married Digna Baltus. The couple moved to Delft and had a daughter named Geertruy who was baptized in 1620, in 1625, Reijnier was involved in a fight with a soldier named Willem van Bylandt who died from his wounds five months later. Around this time, Reijnier began dealing in paintings, in 1631, he leased an inn, which he called The Flying Fox. In 1635, he lived on Voldersgracht 25 or 26, in 1641, he bought a larger inn on the market square, named after the Flemish town Mechelen. The acquisition of the inn constituted a financial burden. When Vermeers father died in October 1652, Vermeer took over the operation of the art business. In April 1653, Johannes Reijniersz Vermeer married a Catholic girl, the blessing took place in the quiet nearby village of Schipluiden. Vermeers new mother-in-law Maria Thins was significantly wealthier than he, according to art historian Walter Liedtke, Vermeers conversion seems to have been made with conviction

Johannes Vermeer
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Detail of the painting The Procuress (c. 1656), considered to be a self portrait by Vermeer.
Johannes Vermeer
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Delft in 1652, by cartographer Willem Blaeu
Johannes Vermeer
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A row of houses on the market in Delft, with the inn Mechelen, but made circa 1730 by Leonard Schenk after a drawing by Abraham Rademaker
Johannes Vermeer
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The Jesuit Church on the Oude Langendijk in Delft, 1700–1725, brush in gray ink, 13.2 × 20.2 cm, Delft, Archief Delft

2.
Oil painting
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Oil painting is the process of painting with pigments with a medium of drying oil as the binder. Commonly used drying oils include linseed oil, poppy seed oil, walnut oil, the choice of oil imparts a range of properties to the oil paint, such as the amount of yellowing or drying time. Certain differences, depending on the oil, are visible in the sheen of the paints. An artist might use different oils in the same painting depending on specific pigments and effects desired. The paints themselves also develop a particular consistency depending on the medium, the oil may be boiled with a resin, such as pine resin or frankincense, to create a varnish prized for its body and gloss. Its practice may have migrated westward during the Middle Ages, Oil paint eventually became the principal medium used for creating artworks as its advantages became widely known. In recent years, water miscible oil paint has come to prominence and, to some extent, water-soluble paints contain an emulsifier that allows them to be thinned with water rather than paint thinner, and allows very fast drying times when compared with traditional oils. Traditional oil painting techniques often begin with the artist sketching the subject onto the canvas with charcoal or thinned paint, Oil paint is usually mixed with linseed oil, artist grade mineral spirits, or other solvents to make the paint thinner, faster or slower-drying. A basic rule of oil paint application is fat over lean and this means that each additional layer of paint should contain more oil than the layer below to allow proper drying. If each additional layer contains less oil, the painting will crack. This rule does not ensure permanence, it is the quality and type of oil leads to a strong. There are many media that can be used with the oil, including cold wax, resins. These aspects of the paint are closely related to the capacity of oil paint. Traditionally, paint was transferred to the surface using paintbrushes. Oil paint remains wet longer than other types of artists materials, enabling the artist to change the color. At times, the painter might even remove a layer of paint. This can be done with a rag and some turpentine for a time while the paint is wet, Oil paint dries by oxidation, not evaporation, and is usually dry to the touch within a span of two weeks. It is generally dry enough to be varnished in six months to a year, art conservators do not consider an oil painting completely dry until it is 60 to 80 years old

3.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town

Paris
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In the 1860s Paris streets and monuments were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, making it literally "The City of Light."
Paris
Paris
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Gold coins minted by the Parisii (1st century BC)
Paris
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The Palais de la Cité and Sainte-Chapelle, viewed from the Left Bank, from the Très Riches Heures du duc de Berry (month of June) (1410)

4.
Netherlands
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The Netherlands is the main constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is a densely populated country located in Western Europe with three territories in the Caribbean. The European part of the Netherlands borders Germany to the east, Belgium to the south, and the North Sea to the northwest, sharing borders with Belgium, the United Kingdom. The three largest cities in the Netherlands are Amsterdam, Rotterdam and The Hague, Amsterdam is the countrys capital, while The Hague holds the Dutch seat of parliament and government. The port of Rotterdam is the worlds largest port outside East-Asia, the name Holland is used informally to refer to the whole of the country of the Netherlands. Netherlands literally means lower countries, influenced by its low land and flat geography, most of the areas below sea level are artificial. Since the late 16th century, large areas have been reclaimed from the sea and lakes, with a population density of 412 people per km2 –507 if water is excluded – the Netherlands is classified as a very densely populated country. Only Bangladesh, South Korea, and Taiwan have both a population and higher population density. Nevertheless, the Netherlands is the worlds second-largest exporter of food and agricultural products and this is partly due to the fertility of the soil and the mild climate. In 2001, it became the worlds first country to legalise same-sex marriage, the Netherlands is a founding member of the EU, Eurozone, G-10, NATO, OECD and WTO, as well as being a part of the Schengen Area and the trilateral Benelux Union. The first four are situated in The Hague, as is the EUs criminal intelligence agency Europol and this has led to the city being dubbed the worlds legal capital. The country also ranks second highest in the worlds 2016 Press Freedom Index, the Netherlands has a market-based mixed economy, ranking 17th of 177 countries according to the Index of Economic Freedom. It had the thirteenth-highest per capita income in the world in 2013 according to the International Monetary Fund, in 2013, the United Nations World Happiness Report ranked the Netherlands as the seventh-happiest country in the world, reflecting its high quality of life. The Netherlands also ranks joint second highest in the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the region called Low Countries and the country of the Netherlands have the same toponymy. Place names with Neder, Nieder, Nether and Nedre and Bas or Inferior are in use in all over Europe. They are sometimes used in a relation to a higher ground that consecutively is indicated as Upper, Boven, Oben. In the case of the Low Countries / the Netherlands the geographical location of the region has been more or less downstream. The geographical location of the region, however, changed over time tremendously

5.
Louvre
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The Louvre or the Louvre Museum is the worlds largest museum and a historic monument in Paris, France. A central landmark of the city, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the citys 1st arrondissement, approximately 38,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 72,735 square metres. The Louvre is the second most visited museum after the Palace Museum in China. The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II, remnants of the fortress are visible in the basement of the museum. Due to the expansion of the city, the fortress eventually lost its defensive function and. The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace, in 1692, the building was occupied by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres and the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, which in 1699 held the first of a series of salons. The Académie remained at the Louvre for 100 years, during the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nations masterpieces. The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801. The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum renamed Musée Napoléon, the collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces. Holdings have grown steadily through donations and bequests since the Third Republic, whether this was the first building on that spot is not known, it is possible that Philip modified an existing tower. According to the authoritative Grand Larousse encyclopédique, the name derives from an association with wolf hunting den, in the 7th century, St. Fare, an abbess in Meaux, left part of her Villa called Luvra situated in the region of Paris to a monastery. This territory probably did not correspond exactly to the modern site, the Louvre Palace was altered frequently throughout the Middle Ages. In the 14th century, Charles V converted the building into a residence and in 1546, Francis acquired what would become the nucleus of the Louvres holdings, his acquisitions including Leonardo da Vincis Mona Lisa. After Louis XIV chose Versailles as his residence in 1682, constructions slowed, however, on 14 October 1750, Louis XV agreed and sanctioned a display of 96 pieces from the royal collection, mounted in the Galerie royale de peinture of the Luxembourg Palace. Under Louis XVI, the museum idea became policy. The comte dAngiviller broadened the collection and in 1776 proposed conversion of the Grande Galerie of the Louvre – which contained maps – into the French Museum, many proposals were offered for the Louvres renovation into a museum, however, none was agreed on. Hence the museum remained incomplete until the French Revolution, during the French Revolution the Louvre was transformed into a public museum. In May 1791, the Assembly declared that the Louvre would be a place for bringing together monuments of all the sciences, on 10 August 1792, Louis XVI was imprisoned and the royal collection in the Louvre became national property

6.
The Geographer
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The Geographer is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in 1668–1669, and is now in the collection of the Städelsches Kunstinstitut museum in Frankfurt, Germany. It is closely related to Vermeers The Astronomer, for using the same model in the same dress. A2017 study indicated that the canvas for the two came from the same bolt of material. This is one of three paintings Vermeer signed and dated. Details of the face are slightly blurred, suggesting movement. His eyes are narrowed, perhaps squinting in the sunlight or an indication of intense thinking, Carr asserts that the painting depicts a flash of inspiration or even revelation. The drawn curtain on the left and the position of the carpet on the table—pushed back—are both symbols of revelation. He grips a book as if hes about to snatch it up to corroborate his ideas, the globe was published in Amsterdam in 1618 by Jodocus Hondius. The globe is turned toward the Indian Ocean, where the Dutch East India Company was then active, Vermeer used an impasto technique to apply pointillé dots, not to indicate light reflected more strongly on certain points but to emphasize the dull ochre cartouche frame printed on the globe. Since the globe can be identified, we know the decorative cartouche includes a plea for information for future editions—reflecting the theme of revelation in the painting, the sea chart on the wall of all the Sea coasts of Europe has been identified as one published by Willem Jansz Blaeu. This accuracy indicates Vermeer had a source familiar with the profession, the Astronomer, which seems to form a pendant with this painting, shows a similar, sophisticated knowledge of cartographic instruments and books, and the same young man modeled for both. That man himself may have been the source of Vermeers correct display of surveying and geographical instruments, Wheelock and others assert the model/source was probably Anthonie van Leeuwenhoek, a contemporary of Vermeer who was also born in Delft. The families of men were in the textile business, and both families had a strong interest in science and optics. A microscopist, van Leeuwenhoek was described after his death as being so skilled in navigation, astronomy, mathematics, philosophy and that one can certainly place him with the most distinguished masteres of the art. Another image of van Leeuwenhoek about 20 years later shows a face and straight nose. At the time Vermeer painted the two works, the scientist would have been about 36 years old and he would have been actively studying for his examination for surveyor, which he passed on February 4,1669. There is no evidence for any kind of relationship between the two men during Vermeers lifetime, although in 1676, van Leeuwenhoek was appointed a trustee for Vermeers estate. The pose of the figure in Vermeers painting takes up precisely the position of Faust in Rembrandts famous etching, according to Lawrence Gowing, similar arrangements can be found in drawings by Nicolaes Maes

The Geographer
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The Geographer
The Geographer
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The Astronomer, which used the same model and other elements, has been considered a pendant to The Geographer
The Geographer
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Faust depicted in an etching by Rembrandt (c. 1650). Faust, also a scholar, is depicted in the same pose as The Geographer, although facing in roughly the opposite direction.
The Geographer
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Vermeer's possible model, Anthony van Leeuwenhoek, painted two decades later by Jan Verkolje

7.
Antonie van Leeuwenhoek
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Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek was a Dutch businessman, scientist, and one of the notable representatives in the golden age of Dutch science and technology. A largely self-taught man in science, he is known as the Father of Microbiology. Van Leeuwenhoek is best known for his work in the field of microscopy. Raised in Delft, in the Dutch Republic, Van Leeuwenhoek worked as a draper in his youth and he made a name for himself in municipal politics, and eventually developed an interest in lensmaking. Using his handcrafted microscopes, he was the first to observe and describe microorganisms, most of the animalcules are now referred to as unicellular organisms, though he observed multicellular organisms in pond water. He was also the first to document microscopic observations of muscle fibers, bacteria, spermatozoa, Van Leeuwenhoek did not write any books, his discoveries came to light through correspondence with the Royal Society, which published his letters. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek was born in Delft, Dutch Republic, on 24 October 1632, on 4 November, he was baptized as Thonis. His father, Philips Antonisz van Leeuwenhoek, was a maker who died when Antonie was only five years old. His mother, Margaretha, came from a well-to-do brewers family, and remarried Jacob Jansz Molijn, Antonie had four older sisters, Margriet, Geertruyt, Neeltje, and Catharina. When he was ten years old his step-father died. He attended school in Warmond for a time before being sent to live in Benthuizen with his uncle. At the age of 16 he became an apprentice at a linen-drapers shop in Amsterdam owned by the Scot William Davidson. Van Leeuwenhoek left after six years, Van Leeuwenhoek married Barbara de Mey in July 1654, with whom he would have one surviving daughter, Maria. That same year he returned to Delft, where he would live and he opened a drapers shop, which he ran throughout the 1650s. His wife died in 1666, and in 1671, Van Leeuwenhoek remarried to Cornelia Swalmius with whom he had no children and his status in Delft had grown throughout the years. In 1660 he received a job as chamberlain for the Delft sheriffs assembly chamber in the City Hall. Van Leeuwenhoek was a contemporary of another famous Delft citizen, the painter Johannes Vermeer and it has been suggested that he is the man portrayed in two of Vermeers paintings of the late 1660s, The Astronomer and The Geographer. However, others argue that there appears to be little physical similarity, while running his drapers shop, Van Leeuwenhoek wanted to see the quality of the thread better than the then-current magnifying lenses available allowed

8.
Jodocus Hondius
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Jodocus Hondius was a Flemish/Dutch/Netherlandish engraver and cartographer. He is sometimes called Jodocus Hondius the Elder to distinguish him from his son Jodocus Hondius II, Hondius is best known for his early maps of the New World and Europe, for re-establishing the reputation of the work of Gerard Mercator, and for his portraits of Francis Drake. One of the representatives in the Golden Age of Dutch/Netherlandish cartography. Hondius was born in Wakken and grew up in Ghent, in his early years he established himself as an engraver, instrument maker and globe maker. In 1584 he moved to London to escape religious difficulties in Flanders, while in England, Hondius was instrumental in publicizing the work of Francis Drake, who had made a circumnavigation of the world in the late 1570s. In particular, in 1589 Hondius produced a now famous map of the bay of New Albion, Hondius is also thought to be the artist of several well-known portraits of Drake that are now in the National Portrait Gallery in London. In 1593 he moved to Amsterdam, where he remained until the end of his life, in co-operation with the Amsterdam publisher Cornelis Claesz. in 1604 he purchased the plates of Gerard Mercators Atlas from Mercators grandson. Mercators work had languished in comparison to the rival Theatrum Orbis Terrarum by Ortelius, Hondius republished Mercators work with 36 additional maps, including several which he himself had produced. Despite the addition of his own contributions, Hondius gave Mercator full credit as the author of the work, hondiuss new edition of Mercators work was a great success, selling out after a year. Hondius later published an edition, as well as a pocket version Atlas Minor. The maps have become known as the Mercator/Hondius series. In the French edition of the Atlas Minor we find one of the first instances of a map using map symbols. This is a map entitled Designatio orbis christiani showing the dispersion of major religions, between 1605 and 1610 he was employed by John Speed to engrave the plates for Speeds The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine. Hondius died, aged 48, in Amsterdam, eventually, starting with the first 1606 edition in Latin, about 50 editions of the Atlas were released in the main European languages. In the Islamic world, the atlas was partially translated by the Turkish scholar Kâtip Çelebi, the series is sometimes called the Mercator/Hondius/Janssonius series because of Janssoniuss later contributions. Hondiuss Mappa Aestivarum Insularum, alias Barmudas dictarum. is a map of Bermuda. Shortly afterwards the Bermudas were granted to the Virginia Company, hence references to the Company on the map including the distance to the Roanoke Colony in Virginia. The miniature map with its own scale, top left, shows the position relative to the Virginian coast

Jodocus Hondius
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Jodocus Hondius on an engraving of the year 1619
Jodocus Hondius
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Hondius' (or his predecessors') use of multiple sources can be illustrated by this map of Asia, which shows Beijing three times: twice as Khanbaliq (Combalich in the land of " Kitaisk " on the Ob River, and Cambalu, in " Cataia ") and once as Paquin (Beijing), in the prefecture of Xuntien (Shuntian)
Jodocus Hondius
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Leo Belgicus (1611).

9.
Frankfurt, Germany
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The city is at the centre of the larger Frankfurt Rhine-Main Metropolitan Region, which has a population of 5.8 million and is Germanys second-largest metropolitan region after Rhine-Ruhr. Since the enlargement of the European Union in 2013, the centre of the EU is about 40 km to the east of Frankfurts CBD. Frankfurt is culturally and ethnically diverse, with half of the population. A quarter of the population are foreign nationals, including many expatriates, Frankfurt is an alpha world city and a global hub for commerce, culture, education, tourism and traffic. Its the site of many global and European headquarters, Frankfurt Airport is among the worlds busiest. Automotive, technology and research, services, consulting, media, Frankfurts DE-CIX is the worlds largest internet exchange point. Messe Frankfurt is one of the worlds largest trade fairs, major fairs include the Frankfurt Motor Show, the worlds largest motor show, the Music Fair, and the Frankfurt Book Fair, the worlds largest book fair. Frankfurt is home to educational institutions, including the Goethe University, the UAS, the FUMPA. Its renowned cultural venues include the concert hall Alte Oper, Europes largest English Theatre and many museums, Frankfurts skyline is shaped by some of Europes tallest skyscrapers. In sports, the city is known as the home of the top football club Eintracht Frankfurt, the basketball club Frankfurt Skyliners, the Frankfurt Marathon. Its the seat of German sport unions for Olympics, football, Frankfurt is the largest financial centre in continental Europe. It is home to the European Central Bank, Deutsche Bundesbank, Frankfurt Stock Exchange, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange is one of the worlds largest stock exchanges by market capitalization and accounts for more than 90 percent of the turnover in the German market. Frankfurt is considered a city as listed by the GaWC groups 2012 inventory. Among global cities it was ranked 10th by the Global Power City Index 2011, among financial centres it was ranked 8th by the International Financial Centers Development Index 2013 and 9th by the Global Financial Centres Index 2013. Its central location within Germany and Europe makes Frankfurt a major air, rail, Frankfurt Airport is one of the worlds busiest international airports by passenger traffic and the main hub for Germanys flag carrier Lufthansa. Frankfurter Kreuz, the Autobahn interchange close to the airport, is the most heavily used interchange in the EU, in 2011 human-resource-consulting firm Mercer ranked Frankfurt as seventh in its annual Quality of Living survey of cities around the world. According to The Economist cost-of-living survey, Frankfurt is Germanys most expensive city, Frankfurt has many high-rise buildings in the city centre, forming the Frankfurt skyline. It is one of the few cities in the European Union to have such a skyline and because of it Germans sometimes refer to Frankfurt as Mainhattan, the other well known and obvious nickname is Bankfurt

Frankfurt, Germany
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Collage of Frankfurt, clockwise from top of left to right: Facade of the Römer and Frankfurt Cathedral, statue of Charlemagne in Frankfurt Historical Museum, view of Frankfurt skyline and Main River
Frankfurt, Germany
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The legend of the Frankenfurt (ford of the Franks)
Frankfurt, Germany
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Frankfurt in 1612
Frankfurt, Germany
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Frankfurt in 1872

10.
Astrology
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Astrology is the study of the movements and relative positions of celestial objects as a means for divining information about human affairs and terrestrial events. Throughout most of its history astrology was considered a tradition and was common in academic circles, often in close relation with astronomy, alchemy, meteorology. It was present in political circles, and is mentioned in works of literature, from Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer to William Shakespeare, Lope de Vega. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in it has largely declined, Astrology is now recognized to be pseudoscience. The word astrology comes from the early Latin word astrologia, which derives from the Greek ἀστρολογία—from ἄστρον astron, astrologia later passed into meaning star-divination with astronomia used for the scientific term. Many cultures have attached importance to astronomical events, and the Indians, Chinese, the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems. Astrology has been dated to at least the 2nd millennium BCE, with roots in systems used to predict seasonal shifts. A form of astrology was practised in the first dynasty of Mesopotamia, Chinese astrology was elaborated in the Zhou dynasty. Hellenistic astrology after 332 BCE mixed Babylonian astrology with Egyptian Decanic astrology in Alexandria, Alexander the Greats conquest of Asia allowed astrology to spread to Ancient Greece and Rome. In Rome, astrology was associated with Chaldean wisdom, after the conquest of Alexandria in the 7th century, astrology was taken up by Islamic scholars, and Hellenistic texts were translated into Arabic and Persian. In the 12th century, Arabic texts were imported to Europe, major astronomers including Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler and Galileo practised as court astrologers. Astrological references appear in literature in the works of such as Dante Alighieri and Geoffrey Chaucer. Throughout most of its history, astrology was considered a scholarly tradition and it was accepted in political and academic contexts, and was connected with other studies, such as astronomy, alchemy, meteorology, and medicine. At the end of the 17th century, new concepts in astronomy. Astrology thus lost its academic and theoretical standing, and common belief in astrology has largely declined, Astrology, in its broadest sense, is the search for meaning in the sky. This was a first step towards recording the Moons influence upon tides and rivers, by the 3rd millennium BCE, civilisations had sophisticated awareness of celestial cycles, and may have oriented temples in alignment with heliacal risings of the stars. Scattered evidence suggests that the oldest known references are copies of texts made in the ancient world. The Venus tablet of Ammisaduqa thought to be compiled in Babylon around 1700 BCE, a scroll documenting an early use of electional astrology is doubtfully ascribed to the reign of the Sumerian ruler Gudea of Lagash

Astrology
Astrology
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Marcantonio Raimondi engraving, 15th century
Astrology
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'The Zodiac Man' a diagram of a human body and astrological symbols with instructions explaining the importance of astrology from a medical perspective. From a 15th century Welsh manuscript
Astrology
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The Roman orator Cicero objected to astrology.

11.
Alphonse James de Rothschild
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Mayer Alphonse James Rothschild, was a French financier, vineyard owner, art collector, philanthropist, racehorse owner/breeder and a member of the prominent Rothschild banking family of France. Known as Alphonse, he was the eldest son of James Mayer de Rothschild and his mother was Betty de Rothschild, the daughter of Salomon Mayer von Rothschild from the Austrian branch of the family. Alphonse was educated to take his place at the head of de Rothschild Frères bank, in France he soon became a major force in the financial world and in 1855 was appointed a regent of the Banque de France, a position he held for the remainder of his life. In 1857 Alphonse de Rothschild married a cousin, Leonora Laure de Rothschild and their firstborn, Bettina Caroline, married Albert Salomon von Rothschild. Alphonse and his brother Gustave developed somewhat of a rivalry with their English cousin Nathaniel de Rothschild who had moved to Paris after marrying their sister Charlotte. Nathaniel worked at de Rothschild Frères bank and in 1853 he purchased the Château Brane Mouton vineyard in Pauillac in the Médoc wine growing region, nathaniels Mouton vineyard received a second-growth ranking in the Bordeaux Wine Official Classification of 1855. Just three months before their father died in 1868, Alphonse and Gustave convinced him to buy the more prestigious First Growth Château Lafite vineyard in Pauillac when it came up for sale, on the death of their father in 1868, Alphonse and Gustave inherited the Château Lafite-Rothschild vineyard. However, they lived in Paris and the vineyard was not significant relative to their investments in banking. As such, they visited the Pauillac vineyard occasionally, maintaining little more than an arms-length interest. On their deaths, the Rothschild brothers willed the property to a son, Alphonse de Rothschild inherited a large fortune on the death of his father in 1868, including share positions in de Rothschild Frères bank and the Northern Railway company. He began his training in finance at an age and his father put him in charge of the banks gold bullion operations. During the 1860s, great debates raged across Europe and the United States as to a monetary system for the changing times. In France, the prominent Péreire brothers bankers were proponents of paper money in contrast to Alphonse de Rothschild who defended preservation of Frances bimetallism system, however, as part of the Latin Monetary Union France joined most of the rest of Europe and adopted the gold standard by 1873. In 1880, Alphonse de Rothschild put together the deal saw the family take control of Société Le Nickel. During the Franco-Prussian War, Alphonse de Rothschild had guarded the ramparts of Paris on the eve of the Prussian siege, in contrast though, that same year, both the Berlin and Vienna stock markets crashed, plunging all of Central Europe into an economic depression. However, in less than a decade Alphonse de Rothschild would witness considerable economic upheaval in France, the collapse of the investment bank Société de lUnion Générale precipitated the 1882 stock market crash that triggered a downturn in the economy. His intense pressure pushed back the project of the décret Crémieux filed by the chief of the provisional government. Alphonse de Rothschild was a supporter of thoroughbred horse racing who in 1852 at the age of twenty-four became a member of the Paris Jockey Club

Alphonse James de Rothschild
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Alphonse James de Rothschild

12.
Nazi
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National Socialism, more commonly known as Nazism, is the ideology and practice associated with the 20th-century German Nazi Party and Nazi Germany, as well as other far-right groups. Nazism subscribed to theories of racial hierarchy and Social Darwinism, identifying Germans as part of what Nazis regarded as an Aryan or Nordic master race and it aimed to overcome social divisions and create a homogeneous society, unified on the basis of racial purity. The term National Socialism arose out of attempts to create a nationalist redefinition of socialism, the Nazi Partys precursor, the Pan-German nationalist and anti-Semitic German Workers Party, was founded on 5 January 1919. By the early 1920s, Adolf Hitler assumed control of the organisation, following the Holocaust and German defeat in World War II, only a few fringe racist groups, usually referred to as neo-Nazis, still describe themselves as following National Socialism. The full name of Adolf Hitlers party was Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, the shorthand Nazi was formed from the first two syllables of the German pronunciation of the word national. The term was in use before the rise of the NSDAP as a colloquial and derogatory word for a peasant, characterizing an awkward. It derived from Ignaz, being a version of Ignatius, a common name in Bavaria. Opponents seized on this and shortened the first word of the name, Nationalsozialistische. The NSDAP briefly adopted the Nazi designation, attempting to reappropriate the term, the use of Nazi Germany, Nazi regime, and so on was popularised by German exiles abroad. From them, the spread into other languages and was eventually brought back to Germany after World War II. In English, Nazism is a name for the ideology the party advocated. The majority of scholars identify Nazism in practice as a form of far-right politics, far-right themes in Nazism include the argument that superior people have a right to dominate over other people and purge society of supposed inferior elements. Adolf Hitler and other proponents officially portrayed Nazism as being neither left- nor right-wing, but the politicians of the Right deserve exactly the same reproach. It was through their miserable cowardice that those ruffians of Jews who came into power in 1918 were able to rob the nation of its arms, a major inspiration for the Nazis were the far-right nationalist Freikorps, paramilitary organisations that engaged in political violence after World War I. The Nazis stated the alliance was purely tactical and there remained substantial differences with the DNVP, the Nazis described the DNVP as a bourgeois party and called themselves an anti-bourgeois party. After the elections in 1932, the alliance broke after the DNVP lost many of its seats in the Reichstag, the Nazis denounced them as an insignificant heap of reactionaries. The DNVP responded by denouncing the Nazis for their socialism, their violence. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was pressured to abdicate the throne and flee into exile amidst an attempted communist revolution in Germany, there were factions in the Nazi Party, both conservative and radical

13.
Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg
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The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce was a Nazi Party organization dedicated to appropriating cultural property during the Second World War. It was led by the chief ideologue of the Nazi party, Alfred Rosenberg, the ERR was initially a project of Hohe Schule der NSDAP, a Nazi-oriented elite university, which was subordinate to Alfred Rosenberg. Rosenberg wanted it to be a research institute filled with material on the opponents of the Nazi ideology. These included Jewish, Masonic, Communist and democratic organizations from throughout Germany, plans to build monumental buildings for the University on the shores of Lake Chiemsee failed to materialize after the outbreak of World War II. Soon after the German Embassy in Paris and SS-Einsatzgruppen also began to steal the most valuable paintings from prominent national museums, galleries, Rosenberg and his organization wanted to be involved in these art raids. He was able to get authority from Hitler to be the only official art procurement organization acting in the occupied countries. The Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg was officially established in Office West in Paris and was divided into different functional departments, the ERR central administration was transferred to Berlin on 1 March 1941 where it became formal subdivision of the German Foreign Office. The Nazis were so eager to acquire valuable masterpieces that art theft became the most important field of work of the ERR. In addition to art, many libraries were looted for the Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in Frankfurt, the operations staff had eight main regional task forces and five technical task forces. Raids connected with the ERR also plundered the belongings of people deported to Nazi concentration camps, between April 1941 to July 1944,29 convoys transported goods seized from Paris to Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany, the ERRs principal place of storage. Until October 17,1944, as estimated by the ERR itself,1,418,000 railway wagons containing books and works of art were transitioned to Germany, more than two hundred libraries of Belarus, especially the state library, suffered irreparable damage during the occupation. An associate of the library, T. Roshchina, calculated that 83 percent of the library’s collection was plundered and destroyed. After the war, some six hundred volumes from the library were found in Germany, Poland and Czechoslovakia. About one million books, however, including rare and old printed volumes, have not been located. Day by day for 26 months, the Hitlerites systematically destroyed one of the most ancient Russian cities, the Soviet Prosecution has presented to the Tribunal a document as Document Number USSR-56, containing the report of the Extraordinary State Commission of the Soviet Union. I shall not quote this document, but I shall only refer to it and endeavor, in my own words, to emphasize the points of this document. In Smolensk, the German fascist invaders plundered and destroyed the most valuable collections in the museums and they desecrated and burned down ancient monuments, they destroyed schools and institutes, libraries, and sanatoriums. The report also mentions the fact that in April 1943, the Germans needed rubble to pave the roads, for this purpose, they blew up the intermediate school

14.
Swastika
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The Swastika is an ancient religious symbol originating from the Indian subcontinent, that generally takes the form of an equilateral cross with four legs each bent at 90 degrees. It is considered to be a sacred and auspicious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism, Western literatures older term for the symbol, gammadion cross, derives mainly from its appearance, which is identical to four Greek gamma letters affixed to each other. The name Swastika comes from Sanskrit, and denotes a lucky or auspicious object and it has been used as a decorative element in various cultures since at least the Neolithic Age. It is known most widely as an important symbol, long used in Indian religions, the swastika was adopted by several organizations in pre-World War I-Europe and later, and most notably, by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany prior to World War II. In many Western countries, the swastika has been highly stigmatized because of its association with Nazism, the word swastika has been in use in English since the 1870s, replacing gammadion. Note that the represented by व in Devanagari, and v in the standard IAST transliteration of Sanskrit, is the labio-dental approximant. The sound persists in modern Hindi and other North Indian languages, an English speaker who is unable to correctly form the Sanskrit labio-dental approximant should say swastika rather than svastika. Swastika in Sanskrit means any lucky or auspicious object, and in particular a mark made on persons and things to denote auspiciousness, or any piece of luck or well-being. It is composed of su, meaning good, well and asti, the phrase swasti therefore means it/he/she is good. The two words spoken together become swasti through sandhi, a process by which sounds modify other sounds spoken close to them, the expression swasti is used as a word on its own, meaning good health or good fortune. The added suffix ka forms an abstract noun, and swastika might thus be translated literally as that which is associated with well-being, corresponding to thing that is auspicious or lucky charm, the word Is recorded first in Vedic Sanskrit. Other names for the symbol include, hooked cross, angled cross or crooked cross, Cross cramponned, cramponnée, or cramponny, in heraldry, as each arm resembles a Crampon or angle-iron. Fylfot, chiefly in heraldry and architecture, gammadion, tetragammadion, or cross gammadion, as each arm resembles the Greek letter Γ. tetraskelion, literally meaning four-legged, especially when composed of four conjoined legs. Whirling logs, can denote abundance, prosperity, healing, chirality describes an absence of reflective symmetry, with the existence of two versions that are mirror images of each other. The mirror-image forms are described as, left-facing and right-facing. The left-facing version is distinguished in some traditions and languages as a symbol from the right-facing swastika. The compact swastika can be seen as an irregular icosagon with fourfold rotational symmetry. Such a swastika proportioned on a 5 ×5 square grid, the Nazi Hakenkreuz used a 5 ×5 diagonal grid, but with the arms unshortened

15.
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art, colloquially the Met, is located in New York City and is the largest art museum in the United States, and is among the most visited art museums in the world. Its permanent collection contains two million works, divided among seventeen curatorial departments. The main building, on the edge of Central Park along Manhattans Museum Mile, is by area one of the worlds largest art galleries. A much smaller second location, The Cloisters at Fort Tryon Park in Upper Manhattan, contains a collection of art, architecture. On March 18,2016, the museum opened the Met Breuer museum at Madison Avenue in the Upper East Side, it extends the museums modern, the Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, Indian, and Islamic art. The museum is home to collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, as well as antique weapons. Several notable interiors, ranging from first-century Rome through modern American design, are installed in its galleries, the Metropolitan Museum of Art was founded in 1870. The founders included businessmen and financiers, as well as leading artists and thinkers of the day and it opened on February 20,1872, and was originally located at 681 Fifth Avenue. The Met maintains extensive holdings of African, Asian, Oceanian, Byzantine, the museum is also home to encyclopedic collections of musical instruments, costumes and accessories, and antique weapons and armor from around the world. A number of interiors, ranging from 1st century Rome through modern American design, are permanently installed in the Mets galleries. In addition to its permanent exhibitions, the Met organizes and hosts traveling shows throughout the year. The director of the museum is Thomas P. Campbell, a long-time curator and it was announced on February 28th,2017 that Campbell will be stepping down as the Mets director and CEO, effective June. On March 1st,2017 the BBC reported that Daniel Weiss shall be the acting CEO until a replacement is found, Beginning in the late 19th century, the Met started to acquire ancient art and artifacts from the Near East. From a few tablets and seals, the Mets collection of Near Eastern art has grown to more than 7,000 pieces. The highlights of the include a set of monumental stone lamassu, or guardian figures. The Mets Department of Arms and Armor is one of the museums most popular collections. Among the collections 14,000 objects are many pieces made for and used by kings and princes, including armor belonging to Henry VIII of England, Henry II of France, Rockefeller donated his more than 3, 000-piece collection to the museum. The Mets Asian department holds a collection of Asian art, of more than 35,000 pieces, the collection dates back almost to the founding of the museum, many of the philanthropists who made the earliest gifts to the museum included Asian art in their collections

Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The facade of the Met dominates the city's " Museum Mile ".
Metropolitan Museum of Art
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The Great Hall

16.
International Standard Book Number
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The International Standard Book Number is a unique numeric commercial book identifier. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, the method of assigning an ISBN is nation-based and varies from country to country, often depending on how large the publishing industry is within a country. The initial ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering created in 1966, the 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108. Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure, however, this can be rectified later. Another identifier, the International Standard Serial Number, identifies periodical publications such as magazines, the ISBN configuration of recognition was generated in 1967 in the United Kingdom by David Whitaker and in 1968 in the US by Emery Koltay. The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO2108, the United Kingdom continued to use the 9-digit SBN code until 1974. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978, an SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prefixing the digit 0. For example, the edition of Mr. J. G. Reeder Returns, published by Hodder in 1965, has SBN340013818 -340 indicating the publisher,01381 their serial number. This can be converted to ISBN 0-340-01381-8, the check digit does not need to be re-calculated, since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland European Article Number EAN-13s. An ISBN is assigned to each edition and variation of a book, for example, an ebook, a paperback, and a hardcover edition of the same book would each have a different ISBN. The ISBN is 13 digits long if assigned on or after 1 January 2007, a 13-digit ISBN can be separated into its parts, and when this is done it is customary to separate the parts with hyphens or spaces. Separating the parts of a 10-digit ISBN is also done with either hyphens or spaces, figuring out how to correctly separate a given ISBN number is complicated, because most of the parts do not use a fixed number of digits. ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for country or territory regardless of the publication language. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture, in other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. In Canada, ISBNs are issued at no cost with the purpose of encouraging Canadian culture. In the United Kingdom, United States, and some countries, where the service is provided by non-government-funded organisations. Australia, ISBNs are issued by the library services agency Thorpe-Bowker

International Standard Book Number
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A 13-digit ISBN, 978-3-16-148410-0, as represented by an EAN-13 bar code

17.
List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer
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The following is a list of paintings by the Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer. After two or three early paintings, he concentrated almost entirely on genre works, typically interiors with one or two figures. His popularity is due less to his subject matter than to the manner in which he portrays his subjects. Vermeers paintings of the 1660s are generally more popular than his work from the 1670s, in the eyes of some, today,34 paintings are firmly attributed to him, with question marks over a further three. This compares to the 74 pictures attributed to him by Thoré-Bürger in 1866, vermeers reputation increased greatly during the latter half of the 20th century, a period during which the number of paintings ascribed to him shrank greatly. This is partly because he has one of the most widely forged artists. No drawings or preparatory paintings are known, many Vermeer paintings are known by various names, and alternative names are noted below. Years of creation are only estimates for most of the paintings, in addition to the known paintings listed below, historical documents seem to describe at least six other, lost, works. Historical documents such as auction records suggest that Vermeer painted a number of works, now presumably destroyed, lost to public view. New York, Konecky & Konecky,1992, Vermeer and His World 1632–1675, Quercus Publishing Plc,2009. ISBN 978-1-84866-001-4 Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works, new York, Harry N. Abrams,1997

18.
The Allegory of Faith
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The Allegory of Faith, also known as Allegory of the Catholic Faith, is a painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–72. The painting is located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Both share several features, the perspective is almost the same, the Art of Painting also uses symbolism from Cesare Ripa. Vermeers Love Letter uses the same or a similar gilt panel, the Allegory and The Art of Painting differ markedly in style and purpose from Vermeers other works. The painting depicts a woman in a white and blue satin dress with gold trimmings. Her left arm rests on the edge of a table which holds a chalice, a large book. Behind the crucifix is a gilt-leather panel screen, beneath the book is a long piece of cloth, possibly a priests stole. Resting on top of the book is a crown of thorns, all of these items are on the platform, which is covered by a green and yellow rug, the edge of which is on the floor. At the bottom of the picture, nearer the viewer, is an apple, on the dim, far wall behind the woman, a large painting of Christs crucifixion is hung on the wall behind the woman. To the viewers left is a tapestry, pulled back at the bottom. A chair with a cloth on it is immediately beneath and behind the tapestry and to the left of the snake. Vermeers iconography in the painting is taken from Cesare Ripas Iconologia. The artist used various symbols that Ripa described and illustrated in his book, along with symbols taken from other books, in his book, Ripa states that Faith is the most important of the virtues. One image in the book shows her as a woman, dressed in white, faiths hand on her breast symbolizes that the virtue rests in her heart. Christ is represented in the cornerstone crushing the snake, and the apple represents original sin, which in Christian doctrine required the sacrifice of the Saviour. Ripa describes Faith as having the world under her feet, and Vermeer used the symbol quite literally, by putting the golden chalice against the dark background of the paintings frame and the dark crucifix against the gilt-leather backdrop, the elements are given a greater prominence in the painting. Selena Cant calls the fact that the book, chalice and crucifix together represent the Catholic Mass, the pose of the woman is similar to Ripas image of Theology. The pose was uncommon in Dutch art, but Vermeer was considered an expert in Italian painting, in which the image was often used

The Allegory of Faith
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The Allegory of Faith
The Allegory of Faith
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Vermeer's Art of Painting

19.
The Art of Painting
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The Art of Painting, also known as The Allegory of Painting, or Painter in his Studio, is a 17th-century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is owned by the Austrian Republic and is on display in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna and this illusionistic painting is one of Vermeers most famous. In 1868 Thoré-Bürger, known today for his rediscovery of the work of painter Johannes Vermeer, svetlana Alpers describes it as unique and ambitious, Walter Liedtke as a virtuoso display of the artists power of invention and execution, staged in an imaginary version of his studio. According to Albert Blankert No other painting so flawlessly integrates naturalistic technique, brightly illuminated space, many art historians think that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. Its composition and iconography make it the most complex Vermeer work of all, the painting depicts an artist painting a woman dressed in blue posing as a model in his studio. The subject is standing by a window and a map of the Low Countries hangs on the wall behind. It is signed to the right of the girl I Ver, most experts assume it was executed sometime between 1665/1668, but some suggest the work could have been created as late as 1670–1675. In 1663 Vermeer had been visited by Balthasar de Monconys, but had no painting to show, Vermeer obviously liked the painting, he never sold it during his lifetime. According to Alpers it stands as a kind of summary and assessment of what has been done, the painting has only two figures, the painter and his subject, a woman with downcast eyes. The painter was thought to be a self-portrait of the artist, the painter sits in front of the painting on the easel, where you can see the sketch of the crown. He is dressed in an elegant black garment with cuts on the sleeves and he has short puffy breeches and orange stockings, an expensive and fashionable garment that is also found in other works of the time, as in a well-known self-portrait by Rubens. The tapestry and the chair, both repoussoirs, lead the viewer into the painting, as in The Allegory of Faith the ceiling can be seen. Experts attribute symbols to various aspects of the painting, the representation of the marble tiled floor and the splendid golden chandelier are examples of Vermeers craftsmanship and show his knowledge of perspective. Each object reflects or absorbs light differently, getting the most accurate rendering of material effects, the map, remarkable is the representation of light on it, shows the Seventeen Provinces of the Netherlands, flanked by 20 views of prominent Dutch cities. It was published by Claes Janszoon Visscher in 1636 and this map, but without the city views on the left and right can be seen on paintings by Jacob Ochtervelt and Nicolaes Maes. Similar maps were found in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and in the Swedish Skokloster. In the top left of the map two women can be seen, one bearing a cross-staff and compasses, while the other has a palette, brush, Vermeer had a theoretical interest for painting. However, according to Ripa History should look back and not down as in this painting, following Vermeers contemporary Gerard de Lairesse, interested in French Classicism and Ripa, there is another explanation, he mentions history and poetry as the main resources of a painter

The Art of Painting
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The Art of Painting
The Art of Painting
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His signature
The Art of Painting
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The Painter's Studio by Michiel van Musscher
The Art of Painting
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Is that a double eagle on top of the chandelier?

20.
Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Vermeer)
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Christ in the House of Martha and Mary is a painting finished in 1655 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is housed in the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh and it is the largest painting by Vermeer and one of the very few with an overt religious motive. The story of Christ visiting the household of the two sisters Mary and Martha goes back to the New Testament, the work has also been called Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. The pigment analysis of this painting reveals the use of the pigments of the period such as madder lake, yellow ochre, vermilion. Interestingly enough Vermeer did not paint the robe of Christ with his usual blue pigment of choice ultramarine but with a mixture of smalt, indigo and lead white

Christ in the House of Martha and Mary (Vermeer)
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Christ in the House of Martha and Mary

21.
The Concert (Vermeer)
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The Concert is a painting by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. The 72. 5-by-64. 7-centimetre picture depicts a man and two women playing music and it belongs to the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, but was stolen in 1990 and remains missing. It is thought to be the most valuable unrecovered stolen painting ever, the picture shows three musicians, a young woman sitting at a harpsichord, a man playing a lute, and a woman who is singing. The harpsichords upturned lid is decorated with an Arcadian landscape, its bright colouring stands in contrast to the two paintings hanging on the wall to the right and left, a viola da gamba can be seen lying on the floor. The painting on the left is a pastoral landscape. The musical theme in Dutch painting in Vermeers time often connoted love and seduction, the location of the painting was unknown for a long time. Sold in Amsterdam in 1696, it did not reappear until 1780 and it was acquired by Isabella Stewart Gardner in an 1892 auction in Paris for $5,000 and subsequently displayed in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, beginning in 1903. On the night of March 18,1990, thieves disguised as policemen stole 13 works out of the museum, to this day the painting has not resurfaced. In an episode of The Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert claims to be in possession of the work, in a 1964 episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour called Ten Minutes from Now, an art thief is shown stealing this painting from a museum. In the 2003 movie Girl with a Pearl Earring, Vermeer is shown painting The Concert at the time that he is painting Girl with a Pearl Earring. In an episode of the television series Gallery Fake, Duet. In an episode of the television series The Venture Brothers, Victor, the Concert along with The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and several other noted works, are displayed among Phantom Limbs collection of stolen art. Stolen, a film about the theft of The Concert, was produced in 2006 by Persistence of Vision Films. An Object of Beauty, a novel by Steve Martin, includes a plot line involving the theft of The Concert from the Stewart Gardner Museum. In an episode of The Simpsons, American History X-cellent, Mr. Burns is jailed after he is discovered to have The Concert among his collection, in the 2011 novel The 39 Clues, The Medusa Plot the painting is found by Amy and Dan Cahill in Italy. In the NCIS, Los Angeles television series episode Active Measures the character Anatoli Kirkin claims that The Concert has been stolen from him

The Concert (Vermeer)
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The Concert

22.
Diana and Her Companions
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Diana and Her Companions is a painting by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer completed in the early to mid-1650s, now at the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague. Although the exact year is unknown, the work may be the earliest painting of the artist still extant, with art historians placing it before Christ in the House of Martha and Mary. Rather than directly illustrating one of the moments in well-known episodes from myths about Diana. The theme of a woman in a private, reflective moment would grow stronger in Vermeers paintings as his career progressed, the painting depicts the Greek and Roman goddess Diana with four of her companions. She wears a loose fitting, yellow dress with a sash and, on her head. As she sits on a rock, a nymph washes her left foot, another, behind Diana, sits with her partially bare back to the viewer, a third nymph, sitting at Dianas left, holds her own left foot with her right hand. A fourth stands in the rear, somewhat apart from the rest of the group and facing them and the viewer at an angle, her eyes cast down, her fists in front of her. A dog sits in the lower left-hand corner near Diana, its back to the viewer as it faces the goddess, her attendants and, immediately in front of it, a thistle. Except for the woman whose face is turned away from the viewer, all of the other faces in the painting are to one degree or another in shadow. None of the look at each other, each seemingly absorbed in their own thoughts. In 1999-2000, when the painting underwent restoration work and was cleaned, numerous reproductions up to that time had included the blue sky. Restorers covered over the patch with foliage to approximate the original image, the canvas had also been trimmed, particularly on the right, where about 15 cm was removed. The painting is signed on the left, on the rock between the thistle and the dog. The canvas is a plain weave linen with a count of 14.3 by 10 per square centimeter. Vermeer first outlined the composition with dark brown brushwork (some of which shows through as pentimenti in the skirt of the woman washing Dianas foot, hairs on the dogs ear were scratched in with the handle of the artists brush. Paint has been lost in vertical lines left of the paintings center, according to Arthur K. Wheelock Jr. the painting has no visual precedent. Nor does the artist show Dianas hot temper or her reactions to those episodes. The goddesss ability as a huntress is not signalled by dead game or bows and arrows, even the dog is depicted as a gentle animal, not like the fast hounds normally seen in paintings of Diana

Diana and Her Companions
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Diana and Her Companions
Diana and Her Companions
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The painting with the blue-sky addition
Diana and Her Companions
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Jacob van Loo, Diana and Her Nymphs 1648.
Diana and Her Companions
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Rembrandt's Bathsheba at Her Bath

23.
A Girl Asleep
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A Girl Asleep, also known as A Woman Asleep, A Woman Asleep at Table, and A Maid Asleep, is a painting by the Dutch master Johannes Vermeer,1657. It is housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, according to Liedtke, the presence of the dog would have alluded to the sort of impromptu relationships canine suitors strike up on the street. The idea that she was together with someone is reinforced by the wine pitcher, the glass on its side. The painting was among the collection of Vermeer works sold on May 16,1696 from the estate of Jacob Dissius. The works history from that point is unknown until its ownership by John Waterloo Wilson in Paris after 1873. It was sold on March 14,1881 in Paris, when the Sedelmeyer Gallery in Paris bought it and sold it later that year to Rodolphe Kann, Kann owned the work until 1907. It was sold in 1908 through the Duveen Brothers of London to Benjamin Altman, Altman owned the work until 1913, when it passed into the hands of the Metropolitan Museum of Art as a bequest. List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age painting Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer, Metropolitan Museum of Art webpage on A Girl Asleep. The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer, exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on A Girl Asleep

A Girl Asleep
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A Girl Asleep

24.
Girl Interrupted at her Music
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Girl Interrupted at Her Music is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It was painted in the style, probably between the years 1658 and 1659, using oil on canvas. In this painting, Vermeer depicts a woman at her music with an older gentleman. This painting shows the typical courtship during the 17th century in Europe and it also focuses on the importance of music when it comes to love. The room that they are shown in is one of higher class, the painting is very reminiscent of Vermeer’s other works. The wine glass, discreetly shown on the table behind the songbook, is tied with both joyfulness and seduction, in the 17th century it was popular to paint scenes that depicted feasts that included drinking, gaming, and playing music. Later on, these large gatherings became smaller and more exclusive with two or three people shown, drinking wine was also associated with love during this time period. You can see that the glass is full and untouched, which symbolizes the slow moving relationship between the man and the woman, on the left side of the painting is a multi-paned window, from which the light source is provided for the scene. Vermeer used the same design in eight of his other works. Some experts questioned whether this painting was by Vermeer, the precision of the lighting from the window was thought to prove that it was in fact an original Vermeer. The chairs depicted in the painting are thought to have been from Spain and they are some of the few objects in the painting that were not damaged by heavy restoration. You can see the minute details including the lion head carving, the studs. The hazy painting in the background of the scene is of Cupid, the painting within a painting was discovered after its restoration in 1907, it had been covered up by a wall and a hanging violin. The reason for Vermeer including the miniature Cupid painting may never be revealed due to the damaged condition. On the table sits a vase made of porcelain and silver, one of the main centers for porcelain in the Netherlands was and still is Delft, although they had limited success in recreating Chinese porcelain. The man in the painting is likely upper class, due to his fashionable attire, love and music often went hand in hand in the 17th century, especially with the presence of a musical duet between a man and a woman. Playing music with one another was one of the few activities where young people of the opposite sex could socialize. The two in the painting were likely part of the bourgeoisie, which meant that they were worldly and educated when it came to music

Girl Interrupted at her Music
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Girl Interrupted at her Music

25.
Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
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Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window is an oil painting by Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer. Completed in approximately 1657–59, the painting is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden. After World War II, the painting was briefly in possession of the Soviet Union, the painting depicts a young Dutch blonde standing at an open window, in profile, reading a letter. A red drapery hangs over the top of the glass, which has opened inward. A tasseled ochre drapery in the left, partially closed. The color of the drape reflects the green of the womans gown, on the table beside the bowl, a peach is cut in half, revealing its pit. He concludes that the letter is a love letter either planning or continuing her illicit relationship and this conclusion, he says, is supported by the fact that x-rays of the canvas have shown that at one point Vermeer had featured a Cupid in the painting. This putto once hung in the right of the piece before, for whatever reason. The draperies themselves, hanging in the foreground, are not an uncommon element for Vermeer. Even more common, the repoussoir appears in 25, with Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window and it was the last painting in which Vermeer featured this device. This painting and Officer and Laughing Girl represent the earliest known examples of the pointillé for which Vermeer became known, Vermeer completed the painting in approximately 1657–59. In 1742, Augustus III of Poland, Elector of Saxony, in 1826, it was mis-attributed again, to Pieter de Hooch. It was so labeled when French art critic Théophile Thoré-Bürger came upon it, recognizing it as one of the works of the Dutch painter. Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window was among the rescued from destruction during the bombing of Dresden in World War II. The painting was stored, with works of art, in a tunnel in Saxony. The Soviets portrayed this as an act of rescue, some others as an act of plunder, the Germans did not take to the idea, and the painting was returned. Well-preserved, it is on display at the Gemäldegalerie in Dresden, the painting was investigated by Hermann Kühn together with several other works of Vermeer in 1968. The pigment analysis has shown that Vermeers choice of painting materials did not reveal any peculiarities as he used the usual pigments of the baroque period

Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window
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Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window

26.
Girl with a Flute
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Girl with a Flute is a small painting attributed to the Dutch Golden Age painter Johannes Vermeer, executed 1665–1670. The work is in possession of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. just as Woman Holding a Balance, A Lady Writing a Letter and it is contested whether the painting can be attributed to Johannes Vermeer. Possibly another painter finished the painting after a start by Vermeer. The composition is comparable to Girl with a Red Hat, the other work Vermeer painted on panel. Just like Girl with a Red Hat and Girl with a Pearl Earring the model wears a glass, Girl with a Flute is a so-called tronie, a study of a remarkable facial expression or a stock character in costume. This was a genre in Dutch Golden Age painting. Tronies were produced for the market, not for specific patrons. Unlike with portraits the models were always anonymous, Girl with a Flute was in possession of the family of Pieter van Ruijven and was sold at the 1696 Dissius auction in Amsterdam. The work was one of the three tronies with catalogue numbers 38,39 and 40. In the 19th century the painting was owned by the Van Son family in Brabant, in 1923 the American art collector Joseph E. Widener bought the painting. Widener donated his extensive and valuable art collection in 1939 to the National Gallery of Art, een biografie van Johannes Vermeer Amsterdam, Uitgeverij Bert Bakker Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works. New York, Harry N. Abrams National Gallery of Art Essential Vermeer

27.
Girl with a Pearl Earring
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Girl with a Pearl Earring is an oil painting by 17th-century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is a tronie of a girl with a headscarf and a pearl earring, the painting has been in the collection of the Mauritshuis in The Hague since 1902. The painting is a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a head that was not meant to be a portrait and it depicts a European girl wearing an exotic dress, an oriental turban, and an improbably large pearl earring. The work is oil on canvas and is 44.5 cm high and 39 cm wide and it is signed IVMeer but not dated. It is estimated to have been painted around 1665, after the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle color scheme and the intimacy of the girls gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced. During the restoration, it was discovered that the dark background and this effect was produced by applying a thin transparent layer of paint, called a glaze, over the present-day black background. However, the two organic pigments of the glaze, indigo and weld, have faded. At the time, it was in poor condition, des Tombe had no heirs and donated this and other paintings to the Mauritshuis in 1902. Later in 2014 it was exhibited in Bologna, Italy, in June 2014, it returned to the Mauritshuis museum which stated that the painting will not leave the museum in the future. The painting was investigated by the scientists of the Netherlands Institute for Cultural Heritage and FOM Institute for Atomic, the ground is dense and yellowish in color and is composed of chalk, lead white, ocher and very little black. The dark background of the painting contains bone black, weld, chalk, small amounts of red ochre, the face and draperies were painted mainly using ochres, natural ultramarine, bone black, charcoal black and lead white. Tracy Chevalier wrote a novel, also entitled Girl with a Pearl Earring, fictionalizing the circumstances of the paintings creation. In the novel, Johannes Vermeer becomes close with a servant named Griet. The novel inspired a 2003 film and 2008 play of the same name, the 2003 film stars Scarlett Johansson as Griet, the girl with the pearl earring. Johansson was nominated for awards including a Golden Globe Award. The painting also appears in the 2007 film St Trinians, when a group of unruly schoolgirls steal it to raise funds to save their school. English street artist Banksy has recreated the painting as a mural in Bristol, replacing the pearl earring with an alarm box, liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School. In-depth view of the Girl with a Pearl Earring An investigation into the illumination of Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring Vermeer, Girl with a Pearl Earring, ColourLex

Girl with a Pearl Earring
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Girl with a Pearl Earring
Girl with a Pearl Earring
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Mauritshuis in The Hague in 2011

28.
Girl with a Red Hat
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Girl with a Red Hat is a rather small painting, signed by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is seen as one of a number of Vermeers tronies – depictions of models fancifully dressed that were not intended to be portraits of specific, other believe it is a portrait. Whether Vermeer chose family members as models or found elsewhere in Delft is irrelevant to the appreciation of his paintings. Its attribution to Vermeer – as it is on a wood panel and it is thought to have been sold on an auction in Amsterdam on May 16,1696. It was bought at a sale at the Hôtel de Bouillon, after his death it came to his nephew and adopted son, Laurent Atthalin, by inheritance to Baron Gaston Laurent-Atthelin and by inheritance to his wife, Baroness Laurent-Atthelin. The painting was sold by M. Knoedler & Co, new York and London, in November 1925 to Andrew W. Mellon for $290.000, who deeded it on March 30,1932 to The A. W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust in Pittsburgh, the trust gave it to the NGA in 1937. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School, web pages on the painting at National Gallery of Art, Washington Essential Vermeer Girl with the Red Hat

Girl with a Red Hat
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Girl with a Red Hat

29.
The Guitar Player (Vermeer)
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The Guitar Player is a 1672 painting by Jan Vermeer, on display in Kenwood House, London as part of the Iveagh Bequest. In 2012 Kenwood closed for renovations until autumn 2013, and the painting was on display in the National Gallery for this period and it was returned to Kenwood House in late December. It was recovered by Scotland Yard in the cemetery of St Bartholomew-the-Great, in Londons financial district, although the painting showed signs of dampness, it was otherwise undamaged. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

30.
The Lacemaker (Vermeer)
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The Lacemaker is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed around 1669–1670 and held in the Louvre, Paris. The work shows a woman dressed in a yellow shawl. At 24.5 cm x 21 cm, the work is the smallest of Vermeers paintings, the canvas used was cut from the same bolt as that used for A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals, and both paintings seem to have had identical dimensions originally. The girl is set against a wall, probably because the artist sought to eliminate any external distractions from the central image. As with his The Astronomer and The Geographer, it is obvious that the artist undertook careful study before he executed the work, the art of lacemaking is portrayed closely and accurately. Vermeer probably used a camera obscura while composing the work, many optical effects typical of photography can be seen, by rendering areas of the canvas as out-of-focus, Vermeer is able to suggest depth of field in a manner unusual of Dutch Baroque painting of the era. In The Lacemaker, the artist presents in a manner the various elements which compose the girls face and body. The girls hands, the curls of her hair and the T-cross which form her eyes, in addition, the red and white of the lace is shown as spilling from the sewing cushion with physical properties suggesting a near liquid form. The blurring of these threads contrasts sharply with the precision of the lace she is working on. Vermeers painting is compared to a 1662 canvas of the same name by the Dutch portrait. However, Vermeers work is different in tone. In the earlier work, both the girls shoes and the mussel shells near her feet have sexual connotations, in addition, the discarded shoes in Netschers painting are unlikely to be the girls own, hinting again at a sexual overtone. According to the art historian Lawrence Gowing, The achievement of Vermeers maturity is complete and it is not open to extension, no universal style is discovered. We have never the sense of abundance that the jewels of his century gives us. There is only one Lacemaker, we cannot imagine another and it is a complete and single definition. New York, Konecky & Konecky,1992, ISBN 0-8387-5538-0 Huerta, Robert D. Vermeer and Plato, Painting the Ideal. ISBN 0-8387-5606-9 Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works, new York, Harry N. Abrams,1997. ISBN 0-8109-2751-9 Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

The Lacemaker (Vermeer)
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The Lacemaker
The Lacemaker (Vermeer)
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The Lacemaker (1662) by Caspar Netscher. Although this work shares with Vermeer a sense of quiet solitude, it hints at sexual overtones unvisited by the later artist

31.
Lady Seated at a Virginal
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Lady Seated at a Virginal, also known as Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, is a genre painting created by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–72 and now in the National Gallery, London. Another painting, probably also by Johannes Vermeer known as A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals and this painting and Lady Seated at a Virginal are quite separate works and are each known by alternate names and confusion between those two pieces may exist. The picture shows a woman facing left and playing a virginal, in the left foreground is a viola da gamba holding a bow between its strings. Vermeer had already featured this painting in The Concert, perhaps six years earlier, at the upper left, a tapestry is used to frame the scene, and in the lower right the foot of the back wall is decorated with Delft tiles. Because of its style, the painting has been dated to about 1670 and it has been suggested that it and Lady Standing at a Virginal may have been created as pendants, because their sizes, date and subject matter are all similar. A recent study has shown that the canvas for the two came from the same bolt. In addition, the applied to the canvas appears identical to that used for both the Lady Standing and the New York Young Woman Seated. However their provenances before the 19th century differ, and Vermeer sometimes varied a theme in otherwise unrelated paintings, in the 19th century, both paintings were owned by the art critic Théophile Thoré, whose writings led to a resurgence of interest in Vermeer starting in 1866. The painting entered the National Gallery with the Salting Bequest in 1910, list of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age painting Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

Lady Seated at a Virginal
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Lady Seated at a Virginal

32.
Lady Standing at a Virginal
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Lady Standing at a Virginal is a genre painting created by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer in about 1670–1672, now in the National Gallery, London. The identities of the paintings on the wall are not certain, according to the National Gallery, the second painting, showing Cupid holding a card, is attributed to Caesar van Everdingen, Allarts brother. The painting has been dated on stylistic grounds and on the evidence of the costume and this work can be related to another Vermeer in the collection, Lady Seated at a Virginal, on a canvas of almost exactly the same size, with which it may form a pair. A recent study has shown that the canvas for the two came from the same bolt. In addition, the applied to the canvas of each painting appears to be identical. The painting is depicted in David Hockneys 1977 oil painting Looking at Pictures on a Screen, Young Woman Seated at a Virginal List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age painting Gaskell, Ivan. Vermeers Wager, Speculations on Art History, Theory and Art Museums, structured around detailed discussion of Lady Standing at a Virginal Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School. Essential Vermeer website web page on the painting

Lady Standing at a Virginal
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Lady Standing at a Virginal

33.
Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid
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Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed in 1670–1671 and held in the National Gallery of Ireland. The work shows a middle-class woman attended by a housemaid who is acting as messenger and go-between for the lady. The work is seen as a bridge between the quiet restraint and self-containment of Vermeers work of the 1660s and his relatively cooler work of the 1670s and it may have been partly inspired by Ter Borchs painting Woman Sealing a Letter. The paintings canvas was almost certainly cut from the bolt used for Woman with a Lute. Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid is the first of the experiments with centrifugal composition. In addition, it is his work in which the drama. The maid is shown standing in the mid-ground, behind her lady, with her hands crossed, the positions of their bodies indicates that the two women are disconnected. The folded arms of the maid seem outwardly as an attempt to display a sense of self-containment, the maids gaze towards the half-visible window indicates an inner restlessness and boredom, as she waits impatiently for the messenger to carry her ladys letter away. Vermeer had experimented with this painterly device earlier in his career, notably in his View of Delft, The Lacemaker and The Art of Painting. Lady Writing was stolen on 27 April 1974, along with a Goya, led by the British heiress Dr. Rose Dugdale, the thieves used screwdrivers to cut the paintings from their frames. However, the Vermeer and other works were recovered eight days later at a cottage in County Cork, the work was again taken in 1986 by a gang led by the Dublin gangster Martin Cahill. Along with a number of other art-works, Cahill held the painting for a ransom of £20 million, however, the money was not paid, and Cahill lacked contacts or knowledge to otherwise pass it on to international art thieves. The painting was recovered during an August 1993 exchange at Antwerp airport which turned out to be a sting operation organised by the Irish police. It had already been donated in absentia to the National Gallery in Dublin, new York, Konecky & Konecky,1992. Vermeer and Plato, Painting the Ideal, ISBN 0-415-06699-9 Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works. New York, Harry N. Abrams,1997, ISBN 0-8109-2751-9 Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid
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Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid

34.
A Lady Writing a Letter
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A Lady Writing a Letter is an oil painting attributed to 17th century Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. It is believed to have been completed around 1665, the Lady is seen to be writing a letter and has been interrupted, so gently turns her head to see what is happening. Many of the objects seen in the painting, such as the coat, the cloth on the table. This has led to speculation that he or his family owned the objects. It has often suggested that in his paintings, Vermeer sought to grant to his models that which he could not endow to his wife and family, calm. A Lady Writing a Letter was donated to the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. in 1962 by Harry Waldron Havemeyer and Horace Havemeyer. In its first loan to the Norton Simon Museum, the National Gallery of Art agreed to lend the painting for exhibition at the Pasadena, California museum from November 7,2008 through February 9,2009. In Blue Ballietts childrens book, Chasing Vermeer, A Lady Writing is stolen on its way from the National Gallery of Art to Chicago, new York, Konecky & Konecky,1992. ISBN 1-56852-308-4 Critical info by Peter Sutton National Gallery of Arts page on A Lady Writing Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

A Lady Writing a Letter
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A Lady Writing a Letter

35.
The Little Street
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The Little Street is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, executed c. It is exhibited at the Rijksmuseum of Amsterdam, and signed on the left corner below the window I V MEER. The painting is made in oil on canvas, and it is a small painting, being 54.3 centimetres high by 44.0 centimetres wide. The painting, showing a street, depicts a typical aspect of the life in a Dutch Golden Age town. It is one of only three Vermeer paintings of views of Delft, the others being View of Delft and the now lost House Standing in Delft and this painting is considered to be an important work of the Dutch master. Straight angles alternate with the triangle of the house and of the sky giving the composition a certain vitality, the walls, stones and brickwork are painted in a thick colour, that it makes them almost palpable. The property on the right in the painting belonged to Vermeer’s aunt and she had a business selling tripe, and the passageway beside the house was known as the Penspoort, or Tripe Gate. Vermeer’s mother and sister lived on the same canal, diagonally opposite. Dutch Golden Age painting List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer, location of Vermeers The Little Street

The Little Street
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The Little Street
The Little Street
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Voldersgracht, where the artist has grown up in Delft.

36.
The Love Letter (Vermeer)
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The Love Letter is a 17th-century genre painting by Jan Vermeer. The painting shows a servant maid handing a letter to a woman with a cittern. The painting is in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, the tied-up curtain in the foreground creates the impression that the viewer is looking at an intensely private, personal scene. There is also an element of trompe loeil as Dutch paintings were hung with little curtains to conserve them. The diagonals on the floor create the impression of depth. The fact that it is a letter that the woman has received is made clear by the fact that she is carrying a lute. The lute was a symbol of love - often carnal love and this idea is further reinforced by the slippers at the very bottom of the picture. The removed slipper was another symbol of sex, the floor brush would appear to represent domesticity, and its placement at the side of the painting may suggest that domestic concerns have been forgotten or pushed aside. Classical influence is apparent in the ionic columns of the fireplace. The two paintings on the wall are also significant, the lower painting is of a stormy sea, a clear metaphor for tempestuous love. Above it is a painting of a traveler on a sandy road. This may refer to the absence of the man who is writing to the lady, in the second half of the 17th century, the painting probably found its place in the collection of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealths monarch John III Sobieski. The 1696 inventory of the Wilanów Palace in Warsaw lists among Dutch paintings a painting of a lady, playing a lute in a golden robe, list of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age painting Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School. The Love Letter at the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam

The Love Letter (Vermeer)
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The Love Letter

37.
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
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The Milkmaid, sometimes called The Kitchen Maid, is an oil-on-canvas painting of a milkmaid, in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, the exact year of the paintings completion is unknown, with estimates varying by source. The Rijksmuseum estimates it as circa 1658, according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, it was painted in about 1657 or 1658. The Essential Vermeer website gives a range of 1658–1661. Also on the table are various types of bread and she is a young, sturdily built woman wearing a crisp linen cap, a blue apron and work sleeves pushed up from thick forearms. A foot warmer is on the floor behind her, near Delft wall tiles depicting Cupid, intense light streams from the window on the left side of the canvas. The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman, yet with half of the womans face in shadow, it is impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration, she wrote. Theres a bit of mystery about her for modern audiences and she is going about her daily task, faintly smiling. And our reaction is What is she thinking, some of the paintings were slyly suggestive, like The Milkmaid, others more coarsely so. Closer to Vermeers day, Nicolaes Maes painted several comic pictures now given titles such as The Lazy Servant, however by this time there was an alternative convention of painting women at work in the home as exemplars of Dutch domestic virtue, dealt with at length by Simon Schama. Vermeers painting is one of the examples of a maid treated in an empathetic and dignified way. Other painters in this tradition, such as Gerrit Dou, depicted attractive maids with symbolic objects such as jugs and various forms of game, milk also had lewd connotations, from the slang term melken, defined as to sexually attract or lure. Examples of works using milk this way include Lucas van Leydens engraving The Milkmaid and Jacques de Gheyn IIs engraving The Archer, other amorous symbols in the painting include a wide-mouthed jug, often used as a symbol of the female anatomy. The foot warmer was often used by artists as a symbol for sexual arousal because. Since other Dutch paintings of the period indicate that foot warmers were used when seated, its presence in the picture may symbolize the standing womans hardworking nature, in Dutch, Het Melkmeisje is the paintings most-used name. According to art historian Harry Rand, the painting suggests the woman is making bread pudding, which would account for the milk, Rand assumed she would have already made custard in which the bread mixed with egg would be soaking at the moment depicted in the painting. She is careful in pouring the trickle of milk because bread pudding can be ruined when the ingredients are not accurately measured or properly combined. By depicting the working maid in the act of cooking, the artist presents not just a picture of an everyday scene

The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
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The Milkmaid
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
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Painting detail showing the foot warmer, with tiles of Cupid and a man with a pole on either side of it; the clothes basket Vermeer removed from the painting was here. Also shown is a detail from the maid's brilliant blue dress.
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
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Gerrit Dou, Girl Chopping Onions
The Milkmaid (Vermeer)
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A 1907 Dutch cartoon by Jan Rinke, reflecting a controversy over whether the state should purchase the painting rather than let it possibly fall into the hands of some rich American art collector. The government bought the work for the Rijksmuseum.

38.
Mistress and Maid
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Mistress and Maid is a painting produced by Johannes Vermeer, now in the Frick Collection in New York City. The work of Johannes Vermeer, also known as Jan, is known for many characteristics that are present in this painting. The use of yellow and blue, female models, and domestic scenes are all signatures of Vermeer and this oil on canvas portrays two women, a Mistress and her Maid, as they look over the Mistress love letter. Johannes Vermeer was born in 1632 in Delft, Holland and he worked and lived in Delft all his life, although it is possible that he may have done an apprenticeship in another town such as Amsterdam or Utrecht for six years. A major stepping point in Vermeers career was in 1653 when he joined the Guild of Saint Luke as a master, Vermeer painted at a somewhat leisure pace, producing two to three paintings a year and there are 35 known to exist today. Vermeers work shows that he was most likely a fan of the camera obscura, there is also an intensity to his colors that supports the use of the obscura. Vermeer died at a young age,43, in 1675. He suffered most likely from a stroke or stress-induced heart attack, the slow rate at which he produced paintings restricted Vermeer from becoming wealthy during his lifetime, and he died in debt. Mistress and Maid was painted over the years 1666–1667 on a canvas, the painting shows an elegant mistress and her maid as they look over a love letter that the mistress just received. There are prominent Vermeer styles presented in this painting, there is a strong use of yellow in the womans elegant fur-lined overcoat, and blue in the silk tablecloth and the maids apron. The focus of the painting is the two women as they are sitting at a desk, doing an everyday activity, Vermeer was known for his domestic scenes containing women. The light in the painting comes from the left, and falls on the mistress face and this painting can seem very straightforward at first glance, but it has deeper psychological implications. If one looks at the image straightforwardly, one sees the mistress as she looks at the love letter. There is a relationship between the maid and the mistress with their furtive glances and their body language, as they lean towards each other. The mistress has a gaze, with her lips parted ever so slightly. The mistress profile is slightly blurred and undefined and is meant to portray an idea that the woman is soft and this is likened to another one of Vermeers paintings, Girl with a Pearl Earring. The painting is preserved well and it has features such as the large scale of the figures, the dark background. In Mistress and Maid, Vermeer played with his medium and created texture, for example, the lighted parts of the yellow overcoat are formed with sweeping brushstrokes of lead-tin-yellow and the shadows are created with definition

39.
The Music Lesson
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The Music Lesson or Lady at the Virginals with a Gentleman by Johannes Vermeer, is a painting of young female pupil receiving the titular music lesson. The picture was sold in May 1696 in Delft, part of the collection of Jacob Dissous and it was later acquired by Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini in 1718, with Pellegrini’s collection later being bought by Joseph Smith. The Music Lesson has been part of the Royal Collection of Great Britain since 1762, when the painting was acquired it was believed to be a work by Frans van Mieris the elder because of a misinterpretation of the signature. It was not correctly attributed to Vermeer until 1866 by Théophile Thoré, the Music Lesson is a mature work of Vermeer and his handling of colour and his choice of painting materials is but one of the aspects proving his mastery. The painting is dominated by areas such as the bluish-black floor painted in bone black with addition of natural ultramarine. The 2013 documentary film Tims Vermeer documents inventor and entrepreneur Tim Jenisons attempt to recreate The Music Lesson to test his theory that Vermeer painted with the help of optical devices. The films claim that Vermeer used something similar to Jenisons technique has been derided by art critics Jonathan Jones, list of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Dutch Golden Age painting Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

The Music Lesson
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The Music Lesson

40.
Officer and Laughing Girl
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It was painted in oil on canvas, typical of most Dutch artists of the time, and is 50.5 by 46 cm. It now resides in The Frick Collection in New York, Officer and Laughing Girl includes many of the characteristics of Vermeers style. The main subject is a woman in a dress, light is coming from the left hand side of the painting from an open window. Each of these occur in some of his other paintings. The main subject is the woman, and soft, direct light falls on her face and she resembles Vermeers wife, Catharina Bolnes, who is believed to have posed for many of his paintings. With x-ray photographs, art historians can see that Vermeer had planned to paint the woman with a white collar which would have hid much of her yellow dress. Also, her cap was extended to cover all of her hair, in order to draw attention to her face. This yellow bodice with braiding has appeared in many of Vermeers other portraits and it is called a schort and was usually worn as an everyday, common dress. The woman is wearing a blue apron over her dress. Blue aprons were common attire at that time because they hid stains well, art historians have interpreted this to mean that the soldier surprised the girl with an impromptu visit during her morning chores. The woman is holding a glass, usually used for white wine. Because at that time, wine cost more than beer, it illustrates her wealth, the man in the painting is a cavalier wearing a red coat and an expensive hat, showing his wealth and rank. His hat is wide- brimmed and made of beaver pelt, which was resistant and good for snowy. The pelts for these hats were imported from the New World and this hat was probably from New Netherlands, which was then under the Dutch West India Companys control. The red in his uniform is associated with power and passion, bringing a passionate and his rank as an officer is identified by the black sash he wears. However, his presence in the foreground is what the viewers notice first. His striking presence adds drama and mystery to the mood of the composition and this artistic device—in which an object is placed in the foreground to increase the depth of field of the overall painting—is called repoussoir. Caravaggio often used this technique and Vermeer probably learned it from a Caravaggists painting, the meaning of the interaction between the woman and the soldier is unknown

41.
Portrait of a Young Woman (Vermeer)
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Portrait of a Young Woman is a painting by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer, completed between 1666 and 1667, and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Because of its size and its proximity in tone and composition. The subjects of both paintings wear pearl earrings, have scarves draped over their shoulders, and are shown in front of a black background. In addition, it is likely that the creation of both involved the use of a camera obscura. The sitter is depicted as having a face, a wide-spaced and flat face, small nose. This apparent lack of idealised beauty has led to a belief that this work was painted on commission. The picture encourages the viewer to be curious about the young womans thoughts, feelings, or character, something typical in many of Vermeers paintings. Girl with a Pearl Earring and Portrait of a Young Woman are unusual for Vermeer in that they lack his usual rich background and this isolating effect seems to heighten their vulnerability and seeming desire to place trust in the viewer. In 1994, the art historian Edward Snow wrote that Portrait of a Young Woman conveys the desire for beauty, the painting is thought to have been part of the Dissius sale of May 16,1696. It probably then belonged to Dr. Luchtmans, who sold it in Rotterdam as part of a sale from April 20–22,1816 for 3 Dutch guilders, even then a tiny amount. Prince Auguste Marie Raymond dArenberg, of Brussels, owned the painting by 1829, in 1959, it was bought in a private sale from the Prince dArenberg by Mr. Charles Wrightsman and Mrs. Jayne Wrightsman of New York for a sum estimated at around £400,000. In 1979, the Wrightsmans donated the picture to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in memory of curator Theodore Rousseau, Jr. Bonafoux, New York, Konecky & Konecky,1992. A View of Delft, Vermeer and his Contemporaries, ISBN 0-300-09053-6 Liedtke, Walter, with Michiel C. ISBN 0-520-07132-8 Wheelock, Arthur K. Vermeer, The Complete Works, New York, Harry N. Abrams,1997. ISBN 0-8109-2751-9 Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

Portrait of a Young Woman (Vermeer)
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Portrait of a Young Woman

42.
The Procuress (Vermeer)
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The Procuress is a 1656 oil-on-canvas painting by the 24-year-old Johannes Vermeer. It can be seen in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden and it is his first genre painting and shows a scene of contemporary life, an image of mercenary love perhaps in a brothel. It differs from his biblical and mythological scenes. It is one of three paintings Vermeer signed and dated. There is a resemblance with the painter in Vermeers The Art of Painting, the man, a soldier, in the red jacket is fondling her breast and dropping a coin into the young womans outstretched hand. According to Benjamin Binstock the painting could be understood as a portrait of his adopted family. Vermeer is in the painting as a musician, in the employ of the madam, in his rather fictional book Binstock explains Vermeer used his family as models, the whore could be Vermeers wife Catherina and the lewd soldier her brother Willem. The three-dimensional jug on the rug is a piece of Westerwald Pottery. The kelim thrown over a barrister, probably produced in Uşak, covers a third of the painting and showes medaillons, the instrument is probably a cittern. The dark coat with five buttons was added by Vermeer in a later stage, in 1696 the painting, being sold on an auction in Amsterdam, was named A merry company in a room. According to Binstock this dark and gloomy painting does not represent a didactic message, some critics have thought the painting is atypical of Vermeers style and expression, because it lacks the typical light. Pieter Swillens wrote in 1950 that—if the work was by Vermeer at all—it showed the artist seeking and groping to find a suitable mode of expression. The painting was exhibited in 1980 at the Restaurierte Kunstwerke in der Deutschen Demokratischen Republic exhibit in the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the technical investigation of this painting was done in 1968 by Hermann Kühn. The pigment analysis revealed Vermeers use of his usual pigments such as ultramarine in the wine jug. He employed also smalt in the parts of the tablecloth. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

The Procuress (Vermeer)
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The Procuress
The Procuress (Vermeer)
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Dirck van Baburen, The Procuress, 1622, oil on canvas, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The painting was owned by Maria Thins, mother-in-law of Johannes Vermeer, who reproduced it within two of his own paintings.

43.
Saint Praxedis (painting)
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Saint Praxedis is an oil painting attributed to Johannes Vermeer. This attribution has often been questioned, however, in 2014 the auction house Christies announced the results of new investigations which in their opinion demonstrate conclusively that it is a Vermeer. The painting is a copy of a work by Felice Ficherelli and it may be Vermeers earliest surviving work, dating from 1655. The painting shows the saint squeezing a martyrs blood from a sponge into an ornate vessel and it is closely related to a work by Ficherelli from 1640–45, now in the Collection Fergnani in Ferrara, and is generally assumed to be a copy of it. The most obvious difference between the two is that there is no crucifix in the Ferrara work and it is Vermeers only known close copy of another work. This is one of only four dated Vermeer paintings, the others being The Procuress, The Astronomer, the paintings provenance before the mid-twentieth century is unknown. The collector Jacob Reder bought it at an auction house in New York in 1943. It first received significant attention as a possible Vermeer when being shown as a part of an exhibition of Florentine Baroque art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in 1969. Following Reders death it was bought by the art dealer Spencer A. Samuels, the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation bought it from Spencer in 1987. The leading Vermeer scholar Arthur Wheelock subsequently argued the case for the attribution to Vermeer in a devoted to it in 1986. The painting was not included in the exhibition The Young Vermeer held in The Hague, Dresden, however it was included in an exhibition of Vermeers work held in Rome in 2012–13, curated by Wheelock, Liedtke and Sandrina Bandera. It was sold at Christies in London on 8 July 2014 on behalf of the Barbara Piasecka Johnson Collection Foundation and it sold to an unknown buyer for £6,242,500, at the lower end of the estimated price range of £6-£8 million. Some art market commentators speculated that doubt about the attribution to Vermeer may have contributed to the low price. From March 2015 it has been on display in the National Museum of Western Art in Tokyo and this appears to be a long-term loan to the museum from a private collector. The painting may have two signatures, the more obvious of the two reads Meer 1655, while the second appears as Meer N R o o. It is possible that this second signature originally read Meer naar Riposo, the Doerner Institutes examination of the signatures concluded that both signatures were original and composed of pigments typical of the painting. However these new investigations agreed with the opinion of the conservator Jørgen Wadum that the possible second signature is too indistinct to be deciphered. Wheelock identifies stylistic similarities with two paintings which are universally attributed to Vermeer

44.
View of Delft
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View of Delft is an oil painting by Johannes Vermeer, painted ca. The painting of the Dutch artists hometown is among his most popular and it is one of three known paintings of Delft by Vermeer, along with The Little Street and the lost painting House Standing in Delft. The use of pointillism in the work suggests that it postdates The Little Street, the technical analysis shows that Vermeer used a limited choice of pigments for this painting, lead white, yellow ochre, natural ultramarine and madder lake are the main painting materials. His painting technique on the hand is very elaborate and meticulous. In 2011, the painting was featured on gold and silver coins issued by the Royal Dutch Mint. The painting also features in Marcel Prousts novel In Search of Lost Time, proust himself greatly admired Vermeer, particularly a View of Delft. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School, arthur K. Wheelock Jr. and C. J. Kaldenbach, Vermeer’s View of Delft and His Vision of Reality, Artibus et Historiae, Vol.3, No. Http, //kalden. home. xs4all. nl/verm/view/Vermeer_main. html Johannes Vermeer, View of Delft, ColourLex Janson, J. Critical Assessments, View of Delft, Essential Vermeer, essays about this painting by several scholars quoted from books on Vermeer

View of Delft
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View of Delft

45.
The Wine Glass
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The Wine Glass is a 1660 painting by Johannes Vermeer now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin. It portrays a woman and a standing man drinking in an interior setting. The work contains the conventions of painting of the Delft School developed by Pieter de Hooch in the late 1650s. It contains figures situated in a brightly lit and spacious interior, the figures are set in the middle ground, rather than positioned in the foreground. The concept of figures drinking around a table, and the portrayal of a woman drinking from a glass are taken directly from De Hoochs A Dutch Courtyard. However, Vermeers work breaks away from the prototypes of De Hooch in that the interior is rendered in a far more elegant and higher-class setting than the older masters works. The clothes of the figures, the tablecloth, the gilded picture frame hanging on the back wall. The scene likely represents some type of courtship, but the roles being played by the two figures are not clear, the woman has just drained the glass of wine and the man seems impatient to pour her more, almost as if he is trying to get her drunk. A musical instrument, the cittern, lies on the chair with musical notebooks, but the figure of Temperance is depicted in the stained glass window, adding to the tension in the scene. Compared to his paintings, Vermeers brushwork in The Wine Glass is subdued. Only in the tapestry of the tablecloth and the glass did the artist apply finely detailed. The painting shares elements with other Vermeer works, the same wine pitcher appears in an earlier Vermeer, A Girl Asleep. The Wine Glass is a work, and as such, is not commonly viewed as one of Vermeers finest. According to art critic Lawrence Gowing, comparing the work with Gabriel Metsus The Duet, it lacks the sociable fluency, University of California Press,1 edition 5 December 1997. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,2001, yale University Press, 1st edition,25 October 1995. Sie sind jetzt hier, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

46.
Woman Holding a Balance
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Woman Holding a Balance, also called Woman Testing a Balance, is an oil painting by Dutch Baroque artist Johannes Vermeer. At one time the painting, completed 1662–1663, was known as Woman Weighing Gold, opinions on the theme and symbolism of the painting differ, with the woman alternatively viewed as a symbol of holiness or earthliness. In the painting, Vermeer has depicted a woman holding an empty balance before a table on which stands an open jewelry box. A blue cloth rests in the foreground, beneath a mirror. Behind the woman is a painting of the Last Judgment featuring Christ with raised, outstretched hands, the woman may have been modeled on Vermeers wife, Catharina Vermeer. Some viewers have imagined the woman is weighing her valuables, while others compare her actions to Christs, some art critics, including John Michael Montias who describes her as symbolically weighing unborn souls, have seen the woman as a figure of Mary. In this perspective, the mirror on the wall may reinforce the vanity of her pursuits, completed in 1662 or 1663, the painting was previously called Woman Weighing Gold before microscopic evaluation confirms that the balance in her hands is empty. The painting was among the collection of Vermeer works sold on May 16,1696 in Amsterdam from the estate of Jacob Dissius. It received 155 guilders, considerably above the prices fetched at the time for his Girl Asleep at a Table and The Officer and the Laughing Girl, but somewhat below The Milkmaid. The first pigment analysis of this painting by Hermann Kühn revealed the use of ultramarine for the blue tablecloth, the pigment in the bright yellow curtain was identified as indian yellow. The sample investigated by H. Kühn in 1968 was unfortunately taken from this extension, the proper pigment of the yellow curtain is lead-tin-yellow. The full pigment analysis according to the latest data is illustrated at Colourlex, carroll, Jane Louise, Alison G. Stewart. Saints, Sinners, and Sisters, Gender and Northern Art in Medieval, huerta, Robert D. Vermeer and Plato, Painting the Ideal. Symbols and Their Hidden Meanings, The Mysterious Significance and Forgotten Origins of Signs, Vermeer and His Milieu, A Web of Social History. In the Phrygian mode, neo-Calvinism, antiquity and the lamentations of reformational philosophy, masterpieces of Western Art, A History of Art in 900 Individual Studies from the Gothic to the Present Day. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

Woman Holding a Balance
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A Woman Holding a Balance

47.
Woman in Blue Reading a Letter
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Woman Reading a Letter is a painting by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer. Part of the collection of the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam since 1885, it was the first Vermeer acquired by the museum, the central element of the painting is a woman in blue standing in front of a window reading a letter. The woman appears to be pregnant, although many have argued that the rounded figure is simply a result of the fashions of the day. Although the womans loose clothing may be suggestive, pregnancy was very rarely depicted in art during this period, while the contents of the letter are not depicted, the composition of the painting is revealing. The map of the Netherlands on the wall behind the woman has been interpreted as suggesting that the letter she reads was written by a traveling husband. Alternatively, the box of pearls barely visible on the table before the woman might suggest a lover as pearls are sometimes a symbol of vanity. The very action of letter-reading reflects a pattern throughout Vermeers works, as the quotidian. The painting is unique among Vermeers interiors in that no fragment of corner, Dutch Golden Age painting List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer The Woman in Blue, a novel by Ellie Griffiths Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School. Media related to Woman Reading a Letter at Wikimedia Commons

Woman in Blue Reading a Letter
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Woman Reading a Letter

48.
Woman with a Lute
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Woman with a Lute, also known as Woman with a Lute Near a Window, is a painting created about 1662–1663 by Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer and now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The painting depicts a woman wearing an ermine-trimmed jacket and enormous pearl earrings as she eagerly looks out a window. The tuning of a lute was recognized by viewers as a symbol of the virtue of temperance. The oil on canvas work is 20¼ inches high and 18 inches wide, the paintings canvas was almost certainly cut from the same bolt as that used for Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid. The work likely was painted shortly after than Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, but the painting has more muted tones, reflecting a shift in that direction by Vermeer in the mid- to late 1660s. At this time, Vermeer began using shadows and soft contours to further evoke an atmosphere of intimacy, the painting was given to the museum in 1900 by a bequest of railroad industrialist Collis P. Huntington. List of paintings by Johannes Vermeer Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School

Woman with a Lute
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Woman With a Lute

49.
Woman with a Pearl Necklace
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Woman with a Pearl Necklace by Johannes Vermeer is a seventeenth-century Northern European painting. Painted in oils on canvas, Johannes Vermeer portrayed a young Dutch woman, most likely of upper-class-descent, as a very popular artist of the 17th century, the Dutch Golden Age, Vermeer depicted many women in similar circumstances within interior, domestic scenes. The same woman appears in The Love Letter and A Lady Writing a Letter. Johannes Vermeer of Delft was one of Netherlands most prominent Dutch painters, specialising in interior scenes, Vermeer developed a distinct style for his many domestic paintings. Popular with middle-class patrons, Vermeer offered glimpses into the lives of Hollands cultured citizens and this marriage may have caused him to convert to Catholicism. As an innkeeper and art dealer, Vermeer painted dozens of paintings in which specific attributes can be noted and these touches allowed Vermeer to idealize his depiction of Dutch women and their values. Some of his most notable works include Girl with a Pearl Earring, The Love Letter, painted in 1664, this 21 5/8 X17 ¾ inch scene depicts a young Dutch woman looking left toward a window’s light source. Dressed in a yellow, fur-trimmed coat, this young woman most likely comes from an upper-class family. With Vermeer’s distinctive style, it incorporates the color yellow, a curtain, framed pictures on the walls, a light source from the left, as well as domestic tools. For example, to the far left, a yellow, drawn back curtain is used, with a rich tone of lemon yellow to complete the woman’s jacket, Vermeer is able to create a balance between the two ends of his painting. The window that the curtain would cover is similar to that in his painting, “The Woman with the Water Pitcher. ”On that same side of the wall. The black frame is most likely made of ebony, which indicates wealth, the fact that Vermeer uses a mirror is also distinctive. Vermeer associated the sense of reflection to portray the woman with vanity or feminine power, also due to Vermeer’s interest in certain Greek muses, he used the mirror to portray duality. However, according to the Essential Vermeer Website, other historians believe this mirror may indicate a Dutch theme of vanitas or the reminder of death, however, there is not a specific way historians can determine this. A large portion of the painting happened to be the white walls and this allows the painter to set a stage for his main subject, the young woman. Without any distraction on the wall behind her, the viewer can look more to the figures expression. The young woman is definitely the most descriptive part of the piece, like many of his other featured women, she is portrayed in a yellow, fur-trimmed morning coat. Comparing these trims, historians can investigate how Vermeer painted, from the microscopic brush strokes, historians can decipher many thin layers of gray and white, which reveal Vermeers attempt to create realism

Woman with a Pearl Necklace
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Woman with a Pearl Necklace

50.
Woman with a Water Jug
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Woman with a Water Jug, also known as Young Woman with a Water Pitcher, is a painting finished between 1660–1662 by the Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer in the Baroque style. It is oil on canvas,45. 7cm x 40.6 cm, a young woman is found in the center of the picture. She is opening a window with her hand, while she holds a water jug with her left hand. This jug rests on a larger platter, both of these, among other objects, are upon on a table. This is decorated with a red-colored tablecloth, behind the table stands a chair upon which lies a blue material. The woman gazes out the window, the clothing of the woman consists of a dark blue dress with a black and gold overpiece. A white cloth serves as her headpiece, a map hangs in the background on the wall. This painting is one of a related group painted in the early to mid-1660s as the artist was not using linear perspective and geometric order. Young Woman with a Water Pitcher was purchased by Henry Gurdon Marquand in 1887 at a Paris gallery for $800, when Marquand brought it to the United States, it was the first Vermeer in America. Marquand donated the artwork along with pieces in his collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. Oard The Milkmaid by Johannes Vermeer, exhibition catalog fully online as PDF from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, which contains material on Woman with a Water Jug

Woman with a Water Jug
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Woman with a Water Jug

51.
A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals
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A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals is a painting generally attributed to Johannes Vermeer, though this was for a long time widely questioned. A series of technical examinations from 1993 onwards confirmed the attribution and it is thought to date from c.1670 and is now in part of the Leiden Collection in New York. It should not be confused with Young Woman Seated at a Virginal in the National Gallery, London, the paintings early provenance is unclear, though possibly it was owned in Vermeers lifetime by Pieter van Ruijven and later inherited by Jacob Dissius. By 1904 it was one of two Vermeers owned by Alfred Beit, the other being Lady Writing a Letter with her Maid and it remained in the Beit family until sold to Baron Rolin in 1960. The painting was not widely known until described in the catalogue of the Beit collection published in 1904, in the first decades following 1904 it was widely accepted as a Vermeer. Then in the century, as some Vermeers were discovered to be forgeries by Han van Meegeren and doubt was cast on others. In 1993 Baron Rolin asked Sothebys to conduct research into the painting, a series of technical examinations followed, which have convinced most experts that it is a Vermeer, though probably one that was reworked in parts after the painters death. Rolins heirs sold the painting through Sothebys in 2004 to Steve Wynn for $30 million and it was later purchased for the Leiden Collection owned by Thomas Kaplan. It has appeared in several Vermeer exhibitions in recent years, in the United States, Britain, Japan, the painting originally had the same dimensions as Vermeers Lacemaker. Tentative evidence that the canvas was cut from the bolt as the Lacemaker. The ground appears identical to that used for the two Vermeers owned by Londons National Gallery, x-ray examination has revealed evidence of a pin-hole at the vanishing point, as habitually used by Vermeer in conjunction with a thread to achieve correct perspective in his paintings. Pigments are used in the painting in a way typical of Vermeer, the use of green earth in shadows is also distinctive. The use of lead-tin-yellow suggests that the painting cannot be a nineteenth- or twentieth-century fake or imitation, examination of the cloak, often cited as the crudest part of the painting, shows that it was painted over another garment after some time had elapsed. It is not known how long this gap was, or if Vermeer was responsible for the repainting, the hairstyle can be dated to c.1670, and matches the hairstyle in the Lacemaker, which on other grounds is also often dated to the same period. It is not clear if the painting was completed before or after the similar but more ambitious Young Woman Seated at a Virginal in the National Gallery, walter Liedtke has described the painting as a minor late work by Vermeer. The colour scheme is typical of Vermeers mature work, webpage on the painting at the Essential Vermeer website Leiden Collection catalogue entry

A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals
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A Young Woman Seated at the Virginals

52.
Dutch Golden Age painting
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The new Dutch Republic was the most prosperous nation in Europe, and led European trade, science, and art. Most work, including that for which the period is best known, a distinctive feature of the period is the proliferation of distinct genres of paintings, with the majority of artists producing the bulk of their work within one of these. The full development of specialization is seen from the late 1620s. A distinctive feature of the period, compared to earlier European painting, was the amount of religious painting. Dutch Calvinism forbade religious painting in churches, and though biblical subjects were acceptable in private homes, the development of many of these types of painting was decisively influenced by 17th-century Dutch artists. The widely held theory of the hierarchy of genres in painting, whereby some types were regarded as more prestigious than others, however this was the hardest to sell, as even Rembrandt found. Many were forced to produce portraits or genre scenes, which much more easily. In descending order of status the categories in the hierarchy were, history painting, including allegories, most paintings were relatively small – the only common type of really large paintings were group portraits. Painting directly onto walls hardly existed, when a wall-space in a public building needed decorating fitted framed canvas was normally used, painted delftware tiles were very cheap and common, if rarely of really high quality, but silver, especially in the auricular style, led Europe. With this exception, the best artistic efforts were concentrated on painting and printmaking, the volume of production meant that prices were fairly low, except for the best known artists, as in most subsequent periods there was a steep price gradient for more fashionable artists. In particular the French invasion of 1672, brought a depression to the art market. The distribution of pictures was very wide, yea many tymes, blacksmithes, cobblers etts. will have some picture or other by their Forge, such is the generall Notion, enclination and delight that these Countrie Native have to Painting reported an English traveller in 1640. There were for virtually the first time many professional art dealers, several significant artists, like Vermeer and his father, Jan van Goyen. Rembrandts dealer Hendrick van Uylenburgh and his son Gerrit were among the most important, typically workshops were smaller than in Flanders or Italy, with only one or two apprentices at a time, the number often being restricted by guild regulations. In many cases involved the artists extricating themselves from medieval groupings where they shared a guild with several other trades. Several new guilds were established in the period, Amsterdam in 1579, Haarlem in 1590, the Leiden authorities distrusted guilds and did not allow one until 1648. The Hague, with the court, was an early example, there were many dynasties of artists, and many married the daughters of their masters or other artists. Many artists came from families, who paid fees for their apprenticeships

53.
Delft School (painting)
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Not to be confused with the Delft School of architecture. The Delft School is a category of mid-17th-century Dutch Golden Age painting named after its main base and it is best known for genre painting, images of domestic life, views of households, church interiors, courtyards, squares and the streets of that city. Carel Fabritius and Nicolaes Maes are seen as the originators of these localised specialties in the 1640s that were continued in the 1650s by Pieter de Hooch, Vermeer is the most famous of these painters today. The architectural interiors of Gerard Houckgeest, Emanuel de Witte and Hendrick Cornelisz, van Vliet are also notable contributions. Liedtke, Walter A. Vermeer and the Delft School, the School of Delft at Essential Vermeer Vermeer and the Delft School Vermeer and the Delft School Vermeer and the Delft School, by Walter Liedtke

54.
Dutch School (painting)
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The Dutch School were painters in the Netherlands from the early Renaissance to the Baroque. It includes Early Netherlandish and Dutch Renaissance artists active in the northern Low Countries and, later, many painters, sculptors and architects of the seventeenth century are called Dutch masters, while earlier artists are generally referred to as part of the Netherlandish tradition. Hieronymus Bosch and Geertgen tot Sint Jans are well-known examples of fifteenth-, rembrandt van Rijn, Frans Hals, Johannes Vermeer, Jacob van Ruisdael and Jan Steen exemplify art during the seventeenth century. An individual works being labelled or catalogued as Dutch School without further attribution indicates that an individual artist for the work cannot be ascertained, there was a healthy artistic climate in Dutch cities during the seventeenth century. For example, between 1605 and 1635 over 100,000 paintings were produced in Haarlem, at that time art ownership in the city was 25%, a record high

55.
Genre painting
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Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of everyday life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre subjects appear in many traditions of art and these were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the decorative background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators. More than a later, the Spanish artist Francisco de Goya used genre scenes in painting and printmaking as a medium for dark commentary on the human condition. His The Disasters of War, a series of 82 genre incidents from the Peninsular War, with the decline of religious and historical painting in the 19th century, artists increasingly found their subject matter in the life around them. In French art this was known as the Troubador style, in the second half of the century interest in genre scenes, often in historical settings or with pointed social or moral comment, greatly increased across Europe. Other 19th-century English genre painters include Augustus Leopold Egg, George Elgar Hicks, William Holman Hunt, scotland produced two influential genre painters, David Allan and Sir David Wilkie. Wilkies The Cottars Saturday Night inspired a work by the French painter Gustave Courbet. Famous Russian realist painters like Vasily Perov and Ilya Repin also produced genre paintings, in Germany, Carl Spitzweg specialized in gently humorous genre scenes, and in Italy Gerolamo Induno painted scenes of military life. Subsequently the Impressionists, as well as such 20th-century artists as Pierre Bonnard, Itshak Holtz, Edward Hopper, other notable 19th-century genre painters from the United States include George Caleb Bingham, William Sidney Mount, and Eastman Johnson

56.
Genre art
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Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, and street scenes. Such representations may be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, some variations of the term genre art specify the medium or type of visual work, as in genre painting, genre prints, genre photographs, and so on. Rather confusingly, the meaning of genre, covering any particular combination of an artistic medium. Painting was divided into a hierarchy of genres, with painting at the top, as the most difficult and therefore prestigious. But history paintings are a genre in painting, not genre works, the following concentrates on painting, but genre motifs were also extremely popular in many forms of the decorative arts, especially from the Rococo of the early 18th century onwards. Single figures or small groups decorated a huge variety of such as porcelain, furniture, wallpaper. Genre painting, also called genre scene or petit genre, depicts aspects of life by portraying ordinary people engaged in common activities. A work would often be considered as a genre work even if it could be shown that the artist had used a known member of his family. In this case it would depend on whether the work was likely to have intended by the artist to be perceived as a portrait—sometimes a subjective question. The depictions can be realistic, imagined, or romanticized by the artist, because of their familiar and frequently sentimental subject matter, genre paintings have often proven popular with the bourgeoisie, or middle class. Genre themes appear in all art traditions. These were part of a pattern of Mannerist inversion in Antwerp painting, giving low elements previously in the background of images prominent emphasis. The generally small scale of these paintings was appropriate for their display in the homes of middle class purchasers. Often the subject of a painting was based on a popular emblem from an Emblem book. The merry company showed a group of figures at a party, other common types of scenes showed markets or fairs, village festivities, or soldiers in camp. In Italy, a school of painting was stimulated by the arrival in Rome of the Dutch painter Pieter van Laer in 1625. He acquired the nickname Il Bamboccio and his followers were called the Bamboccianti, whose works would inspire Giacomo Ceruti, Antonio Cifrondi, jean-Baptiste Greuze and others painted detailed and rather sentimental groups or individual portraits of peasants that were to be influential on 19th-century painting. Spain had a tradition predating The Book of Good Love of social observation and commentary based on the Old Roman Latin tradition, practiced by many of its painters and illuminators

57.
Naturalism (art)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life

58.
Tronie
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A tronie is a common type, or group of types, of works common in Dutch Golden Age painting and Flemish Baroque painting that shows an exaggerated facial expression or a stock character in costume. The term tronie is not clearly defined in art historical literature, literary and archival sources show that initially the term tronie was not always associated with people. Inventories sometimes referred to flower and fruit still lifes as tronies, more common was the meaning of face. Often the term referred to the head, even a bust. A tronie could be two-dimensional, but also made of plaster or stone, sometimes a tronie was a likeness, the depiction of an individual, including the face of God, Christ, Mary, a saint or an angel. In particular a tronie denoted the characteristic appearance of the head of a type, for example a farmer, Tronie sometimes meant a grotesque head or a model such as the type of an ugly old person. When conceived as the face of an individual and of a type a tronies aim was to express feelings and character in an accurate manner and must therefore be expressive. In modern art-historical usage the term tronie is typically restricted to figures not intended to depict an identifiable person, the picture was typically sold on the art market without identification of the sitter, and was not commissioned and retained by the sitter as portraits normally were. Similar unidentified figures treated as history paintings would normally be given a title from the classical world, the genre started in the Low Countries in the 16th century where it was likely inspired by some of the grotesque heads drawn by Leonardo. Leonardo had pioneered drawings of paired grotesque heads whereby two heads, usually in profile, were placed opposite each other in order to accentuate their diversity and this paired juxtaposition was also adopted by artists in the Low Countries. In 1564 or 1565 Joannes and Lucas van Doetecum are believed to have engraved 72 heads attributed to Pieter Brueghel the Elder that followed this paired arrangement and this paired model was still being used by some artists in the 17th century. For instance, the Flemish artist Jan van de Venne who was active in the first half of the 17th century painted a number of tronies juxtaposing different faces, several Rembrandt self-portrait etchings are tronies, as are paintings of himself, his son and his wives. Other definitions would include the studies in facial expression and less-finished etchings with costume, three Vermeer paintings were described as tronies in the Dissius auction of 1696, perhaps including the Girl with a Pearl Earring and the Washington Young Girl with a flute. Frans Hals also painted a number of tronies, which are now among his best-known works, adriaen Brouwer was one of the most successful practitioners of the genre as he had a talent for expressiveness. His work gave a face to lower-class figures by infusing their images with recognizable and vividly expressed human emotions—anger, joy, pain and his Youth Making a Face shows a young man with a satirical and mocking gesture which humanises him, however uninviting he may appear. Brouwers vigorous application of paint in this composition, with his characteristically short, genre painters often returned to the old theme of the allegory of the five senses and created series of tronies depicting the five senses. Examples are Lucas Franchoys the Youngers A man removing a plaster, the tronie is related to, and has some overlap with, the portrait historié, a portrait of a real person as another, usually historical or mythological, figure. Jan de Bray specialised in these, and many portraitists sometimes showed aristocratic ladies in particular as mythological figures, ISBN 978-3-7861-2567-9 Gottwald, Franziska, Das Tronie

59.
Flemish Baroque painting
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Flemish Baroque painting refers to the art produced in the Southern Netherlands during Spanish control in the 16th and 17th centuries. Antwerp, home to the prominent artists Peter Paul Rubens, Anthony van Dyck, Rubens, in particular, had a strong influence on seventeenth-century visual culture. By the seventeenth century, however, Antwerp was the city for innovative artistic production. Brussels was important as the location of the court, attracting David Teniers the Younger later in the century, between 1585 and the early 17th century they made many new altarpieces to replace those destroyed during the iconoclastic outbreaks of 1566. Also during this time Frans Francken the Younger and Jan Brueghel the Elder became important for their small cabinet paintings, often depicting mythological and history subjects. Following his return to Antwerp he set up an important studio, training such as Anthony van Dyck. Most artists active in the city during the first half of the 17th century were influenced by Rubens. Flemish art is notable for the amount of collaboration that took place between independent masters, which was partly related to the local tendency to specialize in a particular area. Frans Snyders, for example, was a painter and Jan Brueghel the Elder was admired for his landscapes. Both artists worked with Rubens, who often painted the figures. In Antwerp, however, this new genre also developed into a specifically Catholic type of painting, history painting, which includes biblical, mythological and historical subjects, was considered by seventeenth-century theoreticians as the most noble art. Abraham Janssens was an important history painter in Antwerp between 1600 and 1620, although after 1609 Rubens was the leading figure, both Van Dyck and Jacob Jordaens were active painting monumental history scenes. Following Rubenss death, Jordaens became the most important Flemish painter, during the second half of the century, history painters combined a local influence from Rubens with knowledge of classicism and Italian Baroque qualities. Artists in the vein include Erasmus Quellinus the Younger, Jan van den Hoecke, Pieter van Lint, Cornelis Schut, later in the century, many painters turned to Anthony van Dyck as a major influence. Among them were Pieter Thijs, Lucas Franchoys the Younger, and artists who were inspired by Late Baroque theatricality such as Theodoor Boeyermans. Additionally, a Flemish variant of Caravaggism was expressed by Theodoor Rombouts, Rubens is closely associated with the development of the Baroque altarpiece. He also exerted an influence on Baroque portraiture through his student Anthony van Dyck. Van Dyck became court painter for Charles I of England and was influential on subsequent English portraiture, other successful portraitists include Cornelis de Vos and Jacob Jordaens

Flemish Baroque painting
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Peter Paul Rubens, The Raising of the Cross, c. 1610–1611
Flemish Baroque painting
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Frans Hogenberg, The Calvinist Iconoclastic Riot of August 20, 1566 when many paintings and church decorations were destroyed and subsequently replaced by late Northern Mannerist and Baroque artists.
Flemish Baroque painting
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Frans Francken the Younger, Preziosenwand (Wall of Treasures), 1636. Kunsthistorischesmuseum, Vienna. This type of painting was one of the distinctly Flemish innovations that developed during the early 17th century.
Flemish Baroque painting
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Anthony van Dyck, Portrait of King Charles I ('Le roy à la Chasse'), 1635. Louvre, Paris.

60.
Baroque art
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The style began around 1600 in Rome and Italy, and spread to most of Europe. The aristocracy viewed the dramatic style of Baroque art and architecture as a means of impressing visitors by projecting triumph, power, Baroque palaces are built around an entrance of courts, grand staircases, and reception rooms of sequentially increasing opulence. However, baroque has a resonance and application that extend beyond a reduction to either a style or period. It is also yields the Italian barocco and modern Spanish barroco, German Barock, Dutch Barok, others derive it from the mnemonic term Baroco, a supposedly laboured form of syllogism in logical Scholastica. The Latin root can be found in bis-roca, in informal usage, the word baroque can simply mean that something is elaborate, with many details, without reference to the Baroque styles of the 17th and 18th centuries. The word Baroque, like most periodic or stylistic designations, was invented by later critics rather than practitioners of the arts in the 17th, the term Baroque was initially used in a derogatory sense, to underline the excesses of its emphasis. In particular, the term was used to describe its eccentric redundancy and noisy abundance of details, although it was long thought that the word as a critical term was first applied to architecture, in fact it appears earlier in reference to music. Another hypothesis says that the word comes from precursors of the style, Giacomo Barozzi da Vignola and he did not make the distinctions between Mannerism and Baroque that modern writers do, and he ignored the later phase, the academic Baroque that lasted into the 18th century. Long despised, Baroque art and architecture became fashionable between the two World Wars, and has remained in critical favour. In painting the gradual rise in popular esteem of Caravaggio has been the best barometer of modern taste, William Watson describes a late phase of Shang-dynasty Chinese ritual bronzes of the 11th century BC as baroque. The term Baroque may still be used, usually pejoratively, describing works of art, craft, the appeal of Baroque style turned consciously from the witty, intellectual qualities of 16th-century Mannerist art to a visceral appeal aimed at the senses. It employed an iconography that was direct, simple, obvious, germinal ideas of the Baroque can also be found in the work of Michelangelo. Even more generalised parallels perceived by some experts in philosophy, prose style, see the Neapolitan palace of Caserta, a Baroque palace whose construction began in 1752. In paintings Baroque gestures are broader than Mannerist gestures, less ambiguous, less arcane and mysterious, more like the stage gestures of opera, Baroque poses depend on contrapposto, the tension within the figures that move the planes of shoulders and hips in counterdirections. Baroque is a style of unity imposed upon rich, heavy detail, Baroque style featured exaggerated lighting, intense emotions, release from restraint, and even a kind of artistic sensationalism. There were highly diverse strands of Italian baroque painting, from Caravaggio to Cortona, the most prominent Spanish painter of the Baroque was Diego Velázquez. The later Baroque style gradually gave way to a more decorative Rococo, while the Baroque nature of Rembrandts art is clear, the label is less often used for Vermeer and many other Dutch artists. Flemish Baroque painting shared a part in this trend, while continuing to produce the traditional categories

61.
Maria Thins
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Maria Thins was the mother-in-law of Johannes Vermeer and a member of the Gouda Thins family. In 1622 she married Reynier Bolnes, a prominent and prosperous brickmaker, in 1635 the marriage deteriorated, her sister found her crying in bed after her husband had beaten her. The couple moved to house, where Wouter Crabeth had lived. There Bolnes had his dinner in the front room, together with his son, while he refused to talk to her, at one time her daughter Cornelia was locked up by her father and in 1641 Maria Thins decided to move to Delft, where her brother lived. Her husband refused to divorce her, but in 1649 she received a sum of money from him. Her daughter Cornelia died in 1643, in 1653 Catharina married Johannes Vermeer in Schipluiden but it is not exactly known when the couple moved in at her rather spacious house on Oude Langendijk. Vermeer had his atelier on the front side of the second floor, Maria Thins apparently played an important role in their life. She was a devotee of the Jesuit order in the nearby Catholic Church, and their third son was called Ignatius, after the founder of the Jesuit Order. It is not known if the children were baptized in the Catholic Church, in 1664 her son Willem, a jobless bachelor, was locked up in an institution after an argument with his mother, and for attacking his pregnant sister with a stick. In 1665 Maria Thins was entrusted with her sons property and she was not required by law to limit his share to the legal minimum, but she mentioned that he had been calling her names since his youth. In 1672 Maria Thins got into difficulties, her land near Schoonhoven was flooded to prevent the French army crossing the Dutch Water Line. In 1675, when Vermeer went on several trips for his mother-in-law, first to Gouda, when her husband had died. There Vermeer borrowed money by using her name. Shortly thereafter Vermeer suffered what was referred to as a frenzy, in the words of his wife and she attributed this to stress caused by all their financial difficulties. After Vermeers death, Maria Thins stated that she used her income to support the struggling painter. For her help she received The Art of Painting, one of the finest, most mysterious and famous paintings in the history of Western Art. In 1676 she lived in the Hague but moved back to Delft where, upon her death, she was buried in the Protestant Old Church on 27 December 1680, the burial record states that she died as the widow of Rijnier Bolnes. Her daughter Catharina moved to Breda, Catharina Bollenes received Holy Oil, according to the records of the Roman Catholic parish of St Joseph, before being buried on 30 December 1687

62.
Pieter van Ruijven
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Pieter Claesz. van Ruijven is best known as Johannes Vermeers patron for the better part of the artists career. Van Ruijven was the son of a brewer and a Remonstrant, in 1653 he married Maria de Knuijt. The couple had one daughter named Magdalena, born in 1655, like his father, he worked for the city institution, the Camer van Charitate. In 1657, he lent Vermeer 200 guilders, in 1680 his daughter Magdalena van Ruijven married Jacob Abrahamsz Dissius, a bookbinder. His father owned a press on the Market square, close to Maria Thins. Magdalena had 20 of Vermeers works in her estate at her death, Magdalena van Ruijven died in 1682, one year after her mother. Her spouse inherited most of her wealth, including 20 paintings by Vermeer, in 1683, the estate was divided by Dissius and his father. In 1694 Abraham Dissius was buried, his son Jacob died the year after, on May 16,1696, twenty-one paintings by Vermeer were sold in an auction in Amsterdam. These paintings brought a total of 1,503 guilders, about seventy guilders each and he is portrayed by Tom Wilkinson in the 2003 film Girl with a Pearl Earring, in which he is depicted as a predatory lecher

63.
Han van Meegeren
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Henricus Antonius Han van Meegeren was a Dutch painter and portraitist and is considered to be one of the most ingenious art forgers of the 20th century. As a child, van Meegeren developed an enthusiasm for the paintings of the Dutch Golden Age, Art critics, however, decried his work as tired and derivative, and van Meegeren felt that they had destroyed his career. He decided to prove his talent to the critics by forging paintings of some of the worlds most famous artists, including Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Gerard ter Borch, and Johannes Vermeer. He so well replicated the styles and colours of the artists that the best art critics and experts of the time regarded his paintings as genuine and his most successful forgery was Supper at Emmaus, created in 1937 while living in the south of France. This painting was hailed as a real Vermeer by famous art experts such as Abraham Bredius, Bredius acclaimed it as the masterpiece of Johannes Vermeer of Delft and wrote of the wonderful moment of being confronted with a hitherto unknown painting by a great master. Nevertheless, a falsified Vermeer ended up in the possession of Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and this would have been an act of treason, the punishment for which was death, so van Meegeren confessed to the less serious charge of forgery instead. He was convicted on falsification and fraud charges on 12 November 1947, after a brief but highly publicized trial and he did not serve out his sentence, however, he died 30 December 1947, in the Valerius Clinic in Amsterdam, after two heart attacks. It is estimated that van Meegeren duped buyers, including the government of the Netherlands, Han van Meegeren was born in 1889 as the third of five children of middle-class Roman Catholic parents in the provincial city of Deventer. He was the son of Augusta Louisa Henrietta Camps and Hendrikus Johannes van Meegeren, early on, Han felt neglected and misunderstood by his father, as the elder van Meegeren strictly forbade his artistic development and constantly derided him. He was often forced by his father to write a hundred times, I know nothing, I am nothing, while attending the Higher Burger School, he met teacher and painter Bartus Korteling who became his mentor. Korteling had been inspired by Johannes Vermeer and showed the young van Meegeren how Vermeer had manufactured and mixed his colours, Van Meegerens father did not share his son’s love of art, instead, he encouraged Han to study architecture. In 1907, van Meegeren, compelled by his fathers demands, left home to study at the Technische Hogeschool in Delft and he received drawing and painting lessons, as well. He easily passed his preliminary examinations but, because he did not wish to become an architect and he nevertheless proved to be an apt architect and designed the clubhouse for his rowing club DDS in Delft. In 1913, van Meegeren gave up his studies and concentrated on drawing and painting at the art school in The Hague. On 8 January 1913, he received the prestigious Gold Medal from the Technical University in Delft for his Study of the Interior of the Church of Saint Lawrence in Rotterdam. The award was given five years to an art student who created the best work. On 18 April 1912, van Meegeren married fellow art student Anna de Voogt who was expecting their first child, the couple went to live with Anna’s grandmother in Rijswijk. Their son Jacques Henri Emil was born on 26 August 1912 in Rijswijk, Jacques van Meegeren also became a painter, he died on 26 October 1977 in Amsterdam

Han van Meegeren
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van Meegeren in 1945, painting Jesus Among the Doctors before an expert panel, shortly before a criminal trial
Han van Meegeren
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Han van Meegeren designed this boathouse (the building left, adjoining an old tower in the town wall) for his Rowing Club D.D.S. while studying architecture in Delft from 1907 to 1913.
Han van Meegeren
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The Deer (or "Hertje") is one of Han van Meegeren’s best-known original drawings.
Han van Meegeren
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Han van Meegeren’s Mansion Primavera in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. It was here, in 1936, that van Meegeren painted his forgery The Supper at Emmaus, which later sold for about $300,000.

64.
Laura J. Snyder
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Laura J. Snyder is an American historian, philosopher, and writer. She is a Fulbright Scholar, a professor at St. John’s University, and she writes narrative-driven non-fiction books about the way that science is intertwined with the rest of culture. Snyder writes for The Wall Street Journal and lives in New York City, Snyder was born in New York City and grew up on Long Island, New York. In 1987, she received BA degrees from Brandeis University in philosophy and she received her PhD in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University in 1996. At Johns Hopkins she also completed a program in the History. She was elected a Life Member of Clare Hall, Cambridge University and she joined the faculty of St. John’s University in New York City in 1996 and was promoted to full professor in 2012. Her first book, Reforming Philosophy, A Victorian Debate on Science, Snyder was a steering committee member of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science from 2003 to 2012 and its president in 2009 and 2010. She was a founding co-editor of the Society’s journal HOPOS, snyder’s first piece for a popular audience was “Sherlock Holmes, Scientific Detective, ” an article that appeared in the September 2004 issue of Endeavour. It has been translated into Italian, and a Chinese translation is forthcoming, Snyder tells this story through the lens of the lives of two men who were born the same week in the small town of Delft, Johannes Vermeer and Antoni van Leeuwenhoek. It is published by W. W. Norton in North American and in the U. K. Snyder was a speaker at TED Global in 2012 and gave the 2011 Dibner Library Lecture at the Smithsonian Institution. She has appeared on shows and podcasts in the US, Canada. She contributes book reviews and essays to the Wall Street Journal, Snyder, Laura J. Eye of the Beholder, Johannes Vermeer, Antoni van Leeuwenhoek, and the Reinvention of Seeing. The Philosophical Breakfast Club, Four Remarkable Friends who Transformed Science, Snyder, Laura J. Reforming Philosophy, A Victorian Debate on Science and Society. One to One - Laura J. Snyder - CUNY TV, the Painter and the Philosopher Who Taught Us How to See. TED Global 2012, Edinburgh, June,2012, Dibner Library Lecture, Smithsonian Institution, December 6,2011. Official website Laura Snyder at TED

Laura J. Snyder
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Laura J. Snyder

65.
Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr
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Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. is the curator of the Northern European Art Collection at the National Gallery of Art, in Washington, DC. Arthur K. Wheelock, Jr. received his PhD from Harvard University in 1973 and he grew up in Uxbridge, Massachusetts, the son of Ann, and Arthur K. Wheelock, CEO of a multigenerational family textile manufacturing enterprise. Arthur K. Jr was also descended from the Rev. Ralph Wheelock, of Dedham, Massachusetts Colony, Wheelock came to the National Gallery of Art in 1973 as the David E. Finley Fellow, and later he was also named the research curator. He commenced his career at the University of Maryland, where he is professor of art history. He was appointed curator of Dutch and Flemish painting at the National Gallery of Art in 1975, in 1982, at the time of the Dutch-American Bicentennial, Wheelock was named Knight Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Dutch Government. The College Art Association/National Institute awarded him its Conservation Award for Distinction in Scholarship, in 2006 Wheelock was named Commander in The Order of Leopold I by the Belgian government

66.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
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Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 1999 historical novel written by Tracy Chevalier. Set in 17th century Delft, Holland, the novel was inspired by Delft school painter Johannes Vermeers painting Girl with a Pearl Earring, Chevalier presents a fictional account of Vermeer, the model, and the painting. The novel was adapted into a 2003 film of the same name, Tracy Chevaliers inspiration for Girl with a Pearl Earring was a poster of Johannes Vermeers Girl with a Pearl Earring. She bought the poster as a nineteen-year-old, and it hung wherever she lived for sixteen years, Chevalier notes that the ambiguous look on the girls face left the most lasting impression on her. She describes the girls expression to be a mass of contradictions, innocent yet experienced, joyous yet tearful, full of longing and she began to think that the girl had directed all these emotions at the painter, and began to think of the story behind that look. Chevaliers research included reading the history of the period, studying the paintings of Vermeer and his peers, pregnant at the time of researching and writing, she finished the work in eight months, because, as she admitted, she had a biological deadline. Sixteen-year-old Griet lives with her family in Delft in 1664 and her father has been recently blinded in an accident, and the familys precarious economic situation forces Griets parents to find her employment as a maid in painter Johannes Vermeers household. Becoming a maid casts doubt on Griets respectability because of the bad reputation that maids have for stealing, spying and sleeping with their employers and it is not revealed how much of this reputation is earned. At the Vermeers, she befriends the familys oldest daughter, Maertge and she also becomes friendly with Tanneke, the other house servant, but is careful to remain modest and unobtrusive for fear of making Tanneke jealous. Griet is increasingly fascinated by Vermeers paintings, Vermeer discovers that Griet has an eye for art, and secretly asks her to run errands and perform tasks for him, such as mixing his paints and acting as a substitute model. Griet arouses the suspicions of Vermeers wife, Catharina, but Vermeers mother-in-law recognizes Griets presence as a steadying and catalyzing force in Vermeers career. Griet is warned by Vermeers friend, Dr. van Leeuwenhoek, Griet realizes that this is true and remains cautious. Vermeers wealthy but licentious patron, Van Ruijven, notices Griet and her beauty, Griet and Vermeer are initially reluctant to fulfill this request due to Griets strict modesty and a scandal surrounding the last girl who had been painted with van Ruijven. Eventually, Vermeer comes up with a compromise and paints a portrait of Griet by herself to be sold to van Ruijven, for the painting, he asks her to wear his wifes pearl earrings. When Catharina discovers this, Griet is forced to leave, ten years later, long after Griet has married Pieter and settled into life as a mother and butchers wife, she is called back to the house upon Vermeers death. Griet assumes that Vermeers widow wishes to settle the households unpaid fifteen-guilder bill with the butcher shop, Pieter laughs and says that he didnt mind losing the fifteen guilders because they bought him Griet as a wife. At the Vermeer house, Griet learns that even though Vermeer had made no effort to see or speak to her, in addition, Vermeers will had included a request that Griet receive the pearl earrings that she wore when he painted her. However, Griet realizes that she could no more wear pearl earrings as a wife than she could as a maid

Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
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In Chevalier's fictional account, the character Griet is the model for Vermeer's painting.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (novel)
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First British edition dustjacket

67.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
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Girl with a Pearl Earring is a 2003 drama film directed by Peter Webber. The screenplay was adapted by screenwriter Olivia Hetreed, based on the novel of the name by Tracy Chevalier. Other cast members include Tom Wilkinson, Cillian Murphy, and Judy Parfitt, Hetreed read the novel before its publication, and her husbands production company convinced Chevalier to sell the film rights. Initially, the production was to feature Kate Hudson as Griet with Mike Newell directing, Hudson withdrew shortly before filming began, however, and the film was placed in hiatus until the hire of Webber, who re-initiated the casting process. In this, which was his film debut, Webber sought to avoid employing traditional characteristics of the period film drama. Cinematographer Eduardo Serra used distinctive lighting and colour similar to Vermeers paintings. Released on 12 December 2003 in North America and on 16 January 2004 in the United Kingdom and it garnered a mostly positive critical reception, with a 72% approval rating from Rotten Tomatoes. Critics generally applauded the films visuals and performances while questioning elements of its story, the film was subsequently nominated for ten British Academy Film Awards, three Academy Awards, and two Golden Globe Awards. Griet is a shy girl living in the Dutch Republic in 1665 and her father, a Delftware painter, has recently gone blind, rendering him unable to work and putting his family in a precarious financial situation. To help matters, Griet is sent to work as a maid in the household of famed painter Johannes Vermeer, Griet works hard, almost wordlessly, in the lowest position in a harsh hierarchy, doing her best despite spiteful treatment by one of Vermeers children. While she is on a shopping trip outside the house. As Griet cleans Vermeers studio, which his wife Catharina never enters, in contrast, Vermeers pragmatic mother-in-law, Maria Thins, sees Griet as useful to Vermeers career. Vermeers rich patron, Van Ruijven, notices Griet on a visit to the Vermeer household and asks the painter if he will give her up to work in his own house, Vermeer refuses, but accepts a commission to paint a portrait of Griet for Van Ruijven. As Vermeer secretly works on the painting, Catharina cannot help but notice something is amiss. As Griet deals with her growing fascination with Vermeer and his talent, soon afterwards, Catharinas mother summons Griet, hands over her daughters pearl earrings, and instructs Griet to finish the painting while Catharina is away for the day. At the final painting session Vermeer pierces Griets earlobe so she can wear one of the earrings for the portrait. They caress and make love in a barn, afterwards, Pieter proposes marriage, but unexpectedly leaves. She then returns the earrings to Catharinas mother, Catharina discovers that Griet used her earrings, accuses her mother of complicity, and demands Vermeer show her the painting of Griet

Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
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Theatrical release poster
Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
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Vermeer's original painting, Girl with a Pearl Earring from 1665
Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
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Scarlett Johansson dyed her eyebrows to better resemble the subject of Vermeer's painting.
Girl with a Pearl Earring (film)
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The filmmakers studied Vermeer works such as The Little Street

68.
Chasing Vermeer
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Chasing Vermeer is a 2004 childrens art mystery novel written by Blue Balliett and illustrated by Brett Helquist. Set in Hyde Park, Chicago near the University of Chicago, after a famous Johannes Vermeer painting, A Lady In Writing, is stolen on route to the Art Institute of Chicago, Calder and Petra work together to try to recover it. The thief publishes many advertisements in the newspaper, explaining that he give the painting back if the community can discover which paintings under Vermeers name were really painted by him. This causes Petra, Calder, and the rest of Hyde Park to examine art more closely, themes of art, chance, coincidence, deception, and problem-solving are apparent. The novel was written for Balliett classroom intended to deal with real-world issues, Balliett values childrens ideas and wrote the book specifically to highlight that. Chasing Vermeer has won awards, including the Edgar and the Agatha. In 2006, the sequel entitled The Wright 3 was published, followed by The Calder Game in 2008, Chasing Vermeer is Blue Ballietts first published book. Its original purpose was a book to read to her class for fun and she realized that a mystery about real art issues had not been written since E. L. Konigsburgs From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, Chasing Vermeer took about five years to complete, as Balliett was also a teacher and parent. She compared writing the book to weaving, as she first wrote mainly about art and she admits that it ended up more complex than she had thought it would be. Balliett used art and blank plates as inspiration for the characters names, Calder Pillay is derived from the artist Alexander Calder and Petra Andalee was inspired by the architecture in Petra, Jordan. The names were meant to be different, which Balliett considered fun for a child, Balliett felt that she could capture the attention of reluctant readers if they related to characters who enjoyed writing and math. Calder and Petras teacher, Ms. Hussey, was inspired by an old name on Nantucket Island, Balliett compares herself to Ms. Hussey, stating that think a lot alike. Some of Ms. Husseys assignments and dialogue even came from Ballietts classroom and she chose the setting of Hyde Park, Chicago, where she currently lives, because she considered it full of secrets that children could discover. The book begins with a letter that is delivered to three unknown recipients, two women and one man. The letter tells them they are of great need to the sender, sixth-graders Calder Pillay, who enjoys puzzles and pentominoes, and Petra Andalee, who aspires to be a writer, are classmates at the Middle School in Hyde Park, Chicago. Their young teacher, Ms. Hussey, is interested in art. Through her pressing questions, they discover the artist Johannes Vermeer and his paintings, especially A Lady Writing, Petra also finds a used book called Lo

Chasing Vermeer
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First US edition cover
Chasing Vermeer
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The first illustration in the book by Brett Helquist showing the recipients of the three letters. Two frogs and the V pentomino that belong to the illustration code are hidden in the picture.

69.
Virtual International Authority File
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The Virtual International Authority File is an international authority file. It is a joint project of national libraries and operated by the Online Computer Library Center. The project was initiated by the US Library of Congress, the German National Library, the National Library of France joined the project on October 5,2007. The project transitions to a service of the OCLC on April 4,2012, the aim is to link the national authority files to a single virtual authority file. In this file, identical records from the different data sets are linked together, a VIAF record receives a standard data number, contains the primary see and see also records from the original records, and refers to the original authority records. The data are available online and are available for research and data exchange. Reciprocal updating uses the Open Archives Initiative Protocol for Metadata Harvesting protocol, the file numbers are also being added to Wikipedia biographical articles and are incorporated into Wikidata. VIAFs clustering algorithm is run every month, as more data are added from participating libraries, clusters of authority records may coalesce or split, leading to some fluctuation in the VIAF identifier of certain authority records

Virtual International Authority File
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Screenshot 2012

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Integrated Authority File
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The Integrated Authority File or GND is an international authority file for the organisation of personal names, subject headings and corporate bodies from catalogues. It is used mainly for documentation in libraries and increasingly also by archives, the GND is managed by the German National Library in cooperation with various regional library networks in German-speaking Europe and other partners. The GND falls under the Creative Commons Zero license, the GND specification provides a hierarchy of high-level entities and sub-classes, useful in library classification, and an approach to unambiguous identification of single elements. It also comprises an ontology intended for knowledge representation in the semantic web, available in the RDF format